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Viz Plug-ins User Guide

Version 5.1 | Published December 12, 2023 ©

Simple Bump Map

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The Simple Bump Map plug-in simulates complex surface structures. Instead of many triangles to render a 3D object with many structures on its surface you can use bump mapping to get a similar result.

You can only use a gray scaled image as normal map. If you want a more accurate result and better effects please use the Bump Map plug-in instead which is using an RGB normal map image.

To generate a Simple Bump Map you can use the plug-ins for Photoshop, Gimp, the built-in functions of your modeling package or NVIDIA’s tool Melody. The Height Map (used for parallax mapping) should be a grayscaled image (white -> highest, black -> lowest bumps).

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Note: All calculations are done in object space.

Note: This plug-in is located in: Plugins -> Shader -> Material

Simple Bump Map Properties

  • NormalMap: Stores a direction of normals directly in the RGB data. Move an normal map via drag and drop onto this field.

  • HeightMap: Move an height map via drag and drop onto this field. The Height Map file is only visible and used when parallax mapping is enabled.

  • Light Source: Selects the light source in the range 1-8. Please consider that only one light source is possible. By default the first light source is used.

  • Position X and Y: Defines the position of the normal map in X-direction and Y-direction.

  • Scale X and Y: Scales the normal map, respectively changes the width and height size of the image.

  • Wrap: Repeats or clamps the bump map for the image.

  • Toggle X and Y: Changes the direction of the normals stored in the normal map image.

  • Scale Height: Changes the intensity of the bump map effect. Scale Height is visible when parallax mapping is enabled.

  • Parallax Mapping: Provides an additional map to the texture for more apparent depth and the object is more realism.

See Also