bump details

[Razor Blade]

Here's the situation...

I'm creating some bump mapping for the blade of my sword, it seems when I use an insanely large black and white image I get a finer more detailed engraving, but if I scale the image down it gets really distorted so to speak. I've been playing around with it trying to get things right, and I've gotten close but am still having problems

I've tried searching through the forums on bump mapping and can't find anything, can someone point to me a tutorial about bump mapping? Is there something from the tutorial list I missed?

Thanks

[Goig!]

Sorry Razor Blade, but you´ll have to stick to the larger bump map if you want to keep the same level of detail. If you reduce it try to anti-alias it very well, even blur it a bit to avoid the distortion.

[Torlok2002]

yeah it is called a trade-off. Bigger image = better quality
smaller image = less quality

[Razor Blade]

now that I've got that part established, here's my actual problem now...

other than making the entire bump the length and width of the blade itself, how do I get that even? I'm playing around with the bump settings but nothing seems to be doing it....

When I set the blur to .001 (the lowest) I don't get those edges but it it makes the bump really rough and unsmooth, when its set to 1 it gets smoother but it makes those edges

[Goig!]

I think that you should blur a bit the original image; that should smooth the jagged lines.

[Torlok2002]

are those lines the same as your bump map? It looks as if you also put your bump in the diffuse slot! I dont see any apparent bump mapping happening. Do you have your bump set to a higher amount? To make it the entire length of the sword you will probably have to apply a uvw map modifier to the sword object. Read about 'UVW maps in max help, im assuming you using max right?

[Razor Blade]

I am using max, and yes I did apply the uvw map modifier in that pic.....and that is the bump map right there there is nothing in the diffuse slot at all....

the white portion is causing that part to bump up

[Razor Blade]

here's what happened when I set the blur to .001

It makes it a little rougher it seems =/

[Aurorae]

If you're using brazil press f10 to go to the render menu, and change the quality settings to P3. This will remove your jaggies.

[kuman]

try turning on super sampling for the bump map. there's a few different kinds of sampling you can use. but they usually help when textures get pixelated due to size issues.

good luck

-k