Not Quite Getting Textures

And it’s either something I’m not getting right, or something I’m misunderstanding how it works.


Actual color of the block is light gray, made it brown for this illustration.

  1. Make the block.
    1b) Set the base color of the block.
  2. Added texture channel 1
    2a) Material set to Stucci, defaults values in the panels
    2b) Map Input: Orco, Cube, size XYZ to 10
    2c) Map To: Nor(1), Nor[4.62]
  3. Added texture channel 2
    3a) Material: Image that is a blue / white screen of the grout between the rocks as seen in the bottom image which has the first 2 channels turned off.
    3b) Map Input: Orco, Cube
    3c) Map To: Nor(1)
  4. Added texture channel 3
    4a) Material: Image that is the faces of the stonework, the grout between the stones is set to transparent.
    4b) Map Input: UV, Flat
    4c) Map To: defaults

Expected results is that channel 2 would deform the surface and cause the surface to darken towards the bottom of the stones in addition to deforming the edges of the block, giving it a rougher look. Am I doing it wrong?

a) It would help tremendously if we had access to an example file with included textures.
b) What version of Blender do you use? From the terms in the settings panels I get the feeling it is quite old?
c) A normal map doesn’t deform geometry. It creates an “illusion” of surface structure that isn’t actually there. So all edges of that block will remain straight. If you want them roughened up, you will need a displacement modifier and much much more geometry.
d) You map that last texture to UV coordinates - but did you UV unwrap that block at all? That’s at least not explicitly mentioned in your list?

b) What version of Blender do you use? From the terms in the settings panels I get the feeling it is quite old?
Blue background indicates blender 2.4x

Right! That’s so long ago I didn’t even remember…:slight_smile:

a) I’ll have to put together a packed file, give me a bit.
b) 2.49b to be precise. Don’t tell me to upgrade, later versions up and die on my alien machine.
b2) You do realize you can change the world color, right?
c) I knew I shouldn’t make posts late at night, my thought process was not at peak performance. My end goal is when rendered, the bump map would cause the rock faces to appear to be extruded slightly, with the grout to appear depressed. I might rework that as a gray scale landscape map, but I can’t find info about what color value does what with a bump map.
d) Yes, it’s UV unwrapped to the texture.

New term, displacement modifier, will have to look into that.

And by “more geometry” you mean subdividing the shape so it has more vertices?

Yes, subdivide enough so that it will deform actual geometry from the texture

Well, how much subdivision is needed?

Attachments

demo-499.blend (398 KB)

I don’t know, that depends on how much you want to deform. I would suggest adding control loops to get your shape to stay correct, then add a subsurf modifier for the extra geo.

The higher the subsurf level, the more intricate the detail of the surface will be. Still not sure if we’re talking about the same thing here. So I made a little example (without diffuse map to better see the difference):


The right image is just a normal map, the left is normal map + displacement.
The right one looks fine on the flat surfaces, but the edges reveal that it is essentially just a fake, an illusion of structure without really deforming geometry: The edges stay straight.

The left one on the other hand has edges that really bend and twist at the price of having to add an incredible amount of geometry (in this case: level 4 subsurf).

That blue and white bump map in your file is a bit weird though… That’s not how normal maps work. If you want to create a normal map from an existing diffuse map, you can e. g. use the GIMP normal map plugin.