Forum: Poser - OFFICIAL


Subject: A new use for reflection maps ?

Kalypso opened this issue on Apr 26, 2002 ยท 6 posts


Kalypso posted Fri, 26 April 2002 at 10:50 AM Site Admin

Reflection maps have mainly been used for adding effects of metal or shine effects but with a little experimenting they can probably be used for a lot more. I've used a reflection map to simulate fabric folds as I find it gives a more subtle and realistic result than bump maps and take up less memory usage. A bump map is usually much larger in size as it's converted to a .bmp type format by Poser while a reflection map can be a .jpg and sometimes not even directly mapped to the item in question but just a simple 200 x 220 image. Of course, if it's to be used for detail it would be best to make it on the uv template. Also useful is it's use to add spots of grime and dirt to make clothing all that more realistic. The reflection settings for the default P4 muscle shirt were : Reflective Color - white, Both "Multiply through lights" and "Multiply through object colour" were checked and the reflection strength for this in particular was 25% though I went into post and used some dodge and burn to bring it out more so maybe it should have been set higher. As I said, I'm still trying this out and once I've got fabrics (which are easier) done then I'll have a go at skin textures to add wrinkles, ageing, scars, etc. The skin texture I've used here is Joelegecko's new Jeff2K which has so much detail that nothing more is needed :) Would really like to get your feedback on this to see if I'm on the right track! Oh, and one last note, I've really messed up my monitor settings so please let me know how this image shows up, it should be on the dark side with strong contrasts and not overly saturated in colour. Is it so????