Mastering Bump Maps for Curious Labs Poser® and Corel Bryce® By Hamfast (aka ) ©2000 (Tools: Poser, Bryce, Corel Photopaint 9, UVMapper) This tutorial is dedicated to the memory of Deborah C. Bishop, aka "BryceTech", the queen of Bryce tutorials who passed from this world on 21st September 2000.The world is poorer through her passing... Return to "Worlds in the making..." Part 1 Introduction It is important to understand and appreciate just what bump maps are capable of, and how they can be used to enhance your Poser- and Bryce-created artwork. I often feel that bump maps are the most underutilized tool in the 3D artist’s arsenal, and this tutorial hopefully will give you a bit more insight into how to create and work with them – and to get them working for you! "Bump Maps, in simple terms, are bitmaps that utilize depth values that when applied to a 3D object simulate the appearance of a rough surface. Depth values are created using a gray scale where the lighter tones (more towards white) are used to simulate raised details and darker tones (more towards black) to simulate the impressed details."
	Here's how bump maps work: Here a bitmap with a grayscale gradient is applied to a flat surface. From the top it would look like this...   ...but if rotated in three dimensions and the grayscale values used as a bump map, the following result will be created.         ...With the technical stuff behind us it is now time to get into the nitty-gritty of creating a bump map.
	Imagine for a moment that the grayscale of the bump map represents a cross-section of a mountain. All the darker values belong in the valley and the lighter values on the peak of that mountain. The tones in the middle would be halfway up (or down) the mountain, on the slopes. The grayscale is a scale of grays from pure white to pure black. They are represented by 256 tonal values, or 0 to 255. Pure White is 255 Red, 255 Green and 255 Blue. Pure Black is 0 Red, 0 Green and 0 Blue. The mid-gray (or 50% gray) is 127 Red, 127 Green and 127 Blue. (Note that I don't use 128 as a value because if 0 is the starting value and 255 is the end value then 127 is in fact the middle, but a single digit doesn't make that much of a difference. Grays are created with EQUAL values of the Red, Green and Blue components) I treat mid-grays as the "plains" of the bump map, laying a mid-gray tone down for the bump map and working in the "valleys" and the "mountain peaks" on either side of that middle ground.
	Lets get started... In this tutorial you will be creating a bump map for the nude Poser Male. You will try to make it look like he is wearing a tight-fitting body suit, but will build in some wrinkles and surface details with the bump map. 1. Firstly you need a basic texture map or template to work with. Use Steve Cox's UVMapper to do this. but... ...first start up Poser and load the desired figure you want. Leave the figure in the default pose. (we just want to extract the UV Map from it) 2. Export it as a WaveFront OBJ file. 3. Ensure the Export settings are left as such.         4. Now start up UVMapper and before loading the WaveFront OBJ file user the Settings and ensure that the output map is 1024 X 1024 pixels - it is easier to work with. 5. Because this was a default Poser figure, there will be an embedded UV Map with it and UVMapper will detect it and display it correctly. The results should look like this... 6. Now Save the texture map. This concludes the 1st part of this tutorial. Are you ready for the next part? [Return to the beginning] [Next part] Free Counter # Most recent revision 30 September, 2000