Learning about specular maps, displacement maps and Normals maps.

As a texture artists it is very important for me to learn all the different types of maps that can help add definition to the object/character. We already shown example of bump map but what about the other types of maps and what do they do?

Specular maps:

Specular maps add shine to an object when light hits it, for example here is an object from Ed Bulmers film. I have already textured the quill but I need a green shine on the feather. At the moment it doesn't have this so the object looks pretty flat.

It has a bump on but needs that shine on the feather to really bring it out. Just like a bump works with gray scale, the specular maps do the same. The only difference is that the lighter the shade the more shine the object has and the darker the shade the less shine it has.

Here is the texture photo shop file:

And here is the bump file:

and here is the specular map file:

we then go in to a specular option box and we can play around with the shine colour and add the specular map.

and here is our green shine to our feather:

Specular is good but with materials such as Mia_material_X_passes there is no need for specular maps as it have some built in pre-sets that allow you to add shine on to the objects without creating a new photo-shop file.




Displacement maps:

Again these are like bump maps but without creating the illusion of depth they actually deform your models. This is great for realistic models but at a huge cost, these increase your render time greatly. Just like bump white rises the displacement and black lowers the displacement.

I found an example of a displacement map on the internet to test out.

so I have to connect this image on to my polygon through hypershade. This is very simple and easy. Just like you do with bump maps.
This is how is will look like in your hypershade:

It will not automatically show the displacement map in maya as this may slow it down so you have to convert the polygons to displacement map in modify so that you can view it in maya. it will look like this:

Its very lumpy and bumpy but you can go in to maya and turn down the displacement map just like you can a bump.

Normal maps in maya:

Normal maps I found where the hardest to get my head around. I am still unsure how they work. Unlike bumps specs and displacement maps these work with colour. here is an example of a normal map:

Normals maps do not change the object shape but how the light reacts to different parts of the objects or characters. It's like an advanced specular maps. I wasn't able to try a normal map out due to the plug in needed but learning about it will help me improve my texturing skills in the future.

Although through out the making of both films all I used was a bump and shaders this information will come very useful in th future to help make my textures more nicer and lifelike :) thanks for reading :) x