Preserved Topic: Displacement maps ????

i've heard alot of things dealing with these could someone shed some light on this dim subject fof me and explain what they do and how to make them.I hate asking so many questions but i want to try to be the nest i can at photoshop...thanks in advance


"Oozing My way into your brain..Blob by blob"
Email dherringw@tecinfo.com

Displacement maps are usually grayscale images that distort the images. White is usually the high point while black is the lowest point.

You can conver whole images to use them as grayscale displcement maps, or create new ones. Channels are often used to make displacement maps, but not always.

What F1 said.
You can also use displacement maps with the glass filter, which is basicly a shiney version of the displace filter with realtime options.
That's what always gets me about the displace filter...you have the run it before you can see what it'll look like, then if you don't like it you need to undo tweak and try again...with glass you can tweak and then see a preview.

A good place to start is with KPT #7 and it's sub articles.
http://www.pixelfoundry.com/Tips/

Then there is one of my favorites: http://www.vgd.co.uk/pages/notebook/Raytracing%20in%20Photoshop/RayPS.html

Listen up, folks. Displacement Visually 101 is about to begin. Look at this and understand.



That's it in a nutshell. No big words or vague examples. The straight dope on displacement.

Now, you don't have to understand it to use it. Sure, you can do glass, chrome, and wireframes with out understanding it. But what are you going do when you need to achieve a specifice effect that can only be done with displacement maps when you don't understand how to reverse engineer the maps?

Any questions? No...? Dismissed.

<--Begin Edit -->

Man, was I being grumpy or what?

Anyways, I had left a few tidbits out.

The Raytracing in Photoshop link is dated -- big time. Blue doesn't do anything. If anybody can prove me wrong, I would love to see it as I've gotten zero results playing with that channel. No prismatic effect, either. Other than that, it should still help.

Using lighting effects is one way to avoid using a 3D program for the map. Another way that I have played with is copying the base alpha into two separate alphas and embossing them from 90 degree angles. One at 0 and the other at 90. Great thing about emboss is 50% grey areas -- especially along the straight-aways. Then cut and paste the alphas into their appropriate RG channels.

Some time ago I talked about using a variation of the map for lighting effects. Try it. It's a pretty smooth way to add depth. I remember seeing some people doing it in the archived post linked below.

Now I'm forgetting other things that I wanted to mention.

Well, I hope the image above helps anybody that is baffled by displacement maps.

<-- End Edit -->


[This message has been edited by warjournal (edited 11-06-2000).]

Doode!!! i think i have a link here...
http://www.ozones.com/forum/Archives/Archive-000004/HTML/20001028-3-000309.html

see if that helps... it is a lot of reading... look at docs work.

thanks for the response and the help i think i understand displacement maps now and i am working on a project when i'm done i'll post so everyone can rate. thanks again


"Oozing My way into your brain..Blob by blob"
Email dherringw@tecinfo.com