Plugin: BitMapStyle Normal Projection Map, New Version 30.9.05 Ambient Colour menu fixed Options

[JohnArtbox]

From the prolific programming skills of Marcel Bricman comes another masterpiece. BitMapStyle takes a texturemap and projects it onto the model using the surface normal .

It's a very new plugin. and I'm still testing the latest version, but Marcel asked me to post it to the forum.

Surfaces that face up are coloured using the top of the texture, surfaces on the left are patterned using the left area of the texture. This means that on many models with flat surfaces there will be stretch patterns.
I'll try to post a better explanation tomorrow.

So why did I post this? ... I asked Marcel how hard it would be to program this plugin and explained my ideas. The next morning I checked my email and received a 'proof of concept', I did some more tests and Marcel did some more programming, and it's here. As well as providing a new texturing method, it should be useful for natural media effects.

Marcel's my hero

New version added 30.9.05 corrects a menu error"ambient colour was labelled ambient colour and intensity.

Attached File(s)

 BitMapStyle.zip ( 9.2k ) Number of downloads: 283

 

[JohnArtbox]

Here's my initial test render. I used the tileable textures that are on the Hash2005 CD to colour a bunch of cows. The BitMapStyle texture was dragged onto the Kows. Total time to apply textures and setup shot was just under 15 minutes.
More tests to come.

Attached image(s)

 

[KenH]

Can you give us an example of where you would use it? Maybe a screenshot? It sounds good. Thanks guys.

Edit: OK there's a picture there now. I'm going to have to experiment.

[JohnArtbox]

And here's a quick example of it on an animated model. It's hard to see at this size, but I've used BitMapStyle to modify diffuse colour, bump and specularity on this model.

Attached File(s)

 cowrun.mpg ( 94.02k ) Number of downloads: 427

 

[KenH]

How/where/when do you access the properties? Before or after applying the decal?

Cool animation. There's something funky happening on the top of his back near the end.

This post has been edited by KenH: Sep 7 2005, 07:32 AM

[JohnArtbox]

You don't decal the model.. it's a projection map of sorts.
Load an image map
Create a material and change the attribute to BitMapStyle.
The various controls are similar to those in a projection map.
The just drop the material onto the model or group. If the model is well rounded, chances are you'll get a useful result.
Additive colour, ambience and stick to surface Off may be useful for fudging ambient light, but it's early days exploring the uses to which this plugin can be put.

The animation has a bit of creasing of the mesh. Considering I went from base mesh to animation in 2 hours, I can live with that for the moment.

[markeh]

So this is basically applying a decal that wraps around a model without flattening the model?.....And this would probably look better for example on a cylinder laying on its side as opposed to standing verticle? Or what is it's difference from a projection map? If stick to surface is off, does your model "swim" through the material?

[John Bigboote]

Hey pretty cool...is this a v12 only texture? Could you post the image you used?

[KingSalami]

ha ha, cool model, I'll try it out

[JohnArtbox]

OK, here's an explanation. If you look at the attached image you'll see the difference between BitMapStyle and a spherical projection map.
A Spherical projection map expands out from a central point. It doesn't matter what way the surface is facing, just where it is in relation to that point.
BitMapStyle is the opposite. It doesn't care about the location of the surface, only about the direction of the surface(otherwise known as the normal, that thin yellow line that makes your model look like a porcupine). Any surface facing up will be coloured according to the top of the texture image. Any surface facing down will take its' colour from the bottom of the image and so on for the front, back, left and right. In this case back, left, front and right are the gradient running from left to right.
In the bottom you can see how it applies to different shapes. Circles work perfectly while other shapes stretch the texture. Straight edges such as those on the cube and cylinders will cause edge lines and are generally not suitable.
This plugin is not a substitute for good decalling and it will not work on every model. It doesn't provide a great deal of fine control, but it will texture some complicated objects (like the skycastle) much quicker than any other method.
Markeh: Yes the texture will swim if not stuck to the surface.
John Bigboote: I honestly don't know. Try it and tell us the results

Attached image(s)

 

[JohnArtbox]

One way to minimise the creasing is to add a bump material, which acts to disperse the normal pattern.
On this image I added a displacement combiner to a rough plane. Added further detail with a bump texture and coloured it using BitMapStyle.

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[KenH]

Abso-friggin-lutely gorgeous! It looks like some of that foam landscape for train sets. Only more real of course.

Say, is Marcel sick or something? Why isn't he touting his own plugin?

[JohnArtbox]

Marcel is busy, so he delivered it into my waiting hands and told me to spread the word...which I dutifully did.

[markeh]

Hey ya! Now we're talkin'. This stirs experimentation. Any other interesting examples you've come up with would be appreciated. Hmmm....... I wonder if you could "crest" waves with a foam look with this on an animated displacement map.

[Zaryin]

The terrain is awesome looking. Thanks Marcel, and John for posting.

[ZPiDER]

hey there!
thanks john for posting and taking the time to explain and post examples.
i'm really stressed out at the moment (just find the time to read when i'm waiting for something to finish - right now i'm waiting for a dvd burn - i actually wrote the plugin while i waited for vegas to render the project i'm currently working on) but hey i dont complain about too much work to do

hope you can put the plugin to good use! john sure did, i still love those kows
if you do use it, please post your stuff here!
thanks!

[JohnArtbox]

Just out of curiousity...did I get all the details right Marcel?

[ZPiDER]

you sure did!
and that bump map idea to disperse the normals is ingenuous! only works with quite simple, gradient-like bitmaps, but i think this has a lot of potential.

cubes and cylinders, which would normally not look good with BitMapStyle, could also beefit from bump decaling (you could also additionally add a crumple attribute to the material ..

[TempleTiger]

Can not download file - forum change may be the cause or is it just me?

[heyvern]

Apparently some of the older file links in posts did not survive the transfer to the new forum. I have found other "broken" links to image and non-image files.

Probably should post this in the forum support area... I just wanted to wait and see if it was a temporary glitch.

Vernon "!" Zehr

[JohnArtbox]

Can't seem to upload the file again, email me direct and I'll post it to you.

[JohnArtbox]

Still can't upload the file, but here's another use for BitMapStyle. Basically I used it to replace ambient light. While it doesn't provide the ambient occlusion effect of a skycast light it is very fast and I like the 'depth' of the ambient light, rather than having a single tone washout.

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[JohnArtbox]

Busily talking to myself:o)
added a new version to the front page today. It adds the ability to affect a model's ambient colour.
By adding a BMS Ambient map(as in the previous post), then adding a BMS Ambient colour post you can have the model lit by strong blue ambient light from above and soft green ambient light from below.

[Rodney]

Just wanted to add that this is really great stuff. Outstanding programming Marcel and excellent description John.

Love those kows too.

[TempleTiger]

I was beginning to think you where just teasing us John
This is a great plugin.

I'm having some fun with it right now, however I seem to have found a problem that I've meet before with projection plugins... When you apply the material to a model with weighted CPs, the texture breaks around the weights, when it is supposed to stick to surface



...It looks like the animated Cow is suffering from the same thing, on its back.
I reported this once, ages ago, but I guess it is hidding in a pile somewhere.

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[JohnArtbox]

The Kows don't have any point weighting, in the running Kow there's a geometry /rigging flaw. I've seen the same type of thing mainly occur on 5 point patches, but it's worth reporting to AMREports or following up on your previous report.
Here's some examples using the ambient colour option.

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Attached File(s)

 rotate.mov ( 691.38k ) Number of downloads: 144

 

[Fuchur]

Very very nice!

Thank you Marcel... some time ago I wrote a feature request to Hash for excactly that function, but I couldnt make my self clear enough, I think...

Thx!
*Fuchur*

[ZenPsycho]

hey this is great. A while back I had a very similar idea- Except instead of a texture that depends on surface normal, it depends on the angle between the surface normal and a lightsource- and with multiple lightsources, the results are averaged together. I figure something like that could be used to simulate all kinds of surfaces, including a new way to simulate sub surface scattering. Is such a thing possible in A:M's plugin system?

[JohnArtbox]

I beleive this is currently impossible to do with a material, but plausible using a shader.

[ZenPsycho]

I beleive this is currently impossible to do with a material, but plausible using a shader.

Okay, this is probably a long shot but.. has this already been done?

[ZPiDER]

it could be done using a shader (try the gradient toon shadeing that comes with a:m!)

but shaders render real slow to my experience .. (the toon shader is quite fast though!)

have a look at

http://www.kci-group.com/z/skinshading.htm

where i'm faking sss using a:m's toon shader as you've described.

[ZenPsycho]

it could be done using a shader (try the gradient toon shadeing that comes with a:m!)

but shaders render real slow to my experience .. (the toon shader is quite fast though!)

have a look at

http://www.kci-group.com/z/skinshading.htm

where i'm faking sss using a:m's toon shader as you've described.

Ah but I'm not neccesarily thinking about skin. I'm thinking about the way a light behind an object (sort of a negative angle) can diffuse through to the other side, such as on a leaf. But that's not the final ends or limits of this sort of idea.

While the toon gradient can take into account a single positive angle, I'm talking about taking spherical coordinates from the angle between light and surface, (two angles, resulting in a "3d" angle) and mapping the coordinates to a 2 dimensional image rather than a 1 dimensional gradient, and this 2 dimensional image would include negative angles (that is, situations where the light exists on the other side of the object-answering the question, how is the normal opposite from the light illuminated?)

does that make sense?

[MattWBradbury]

Were getting to the point now where animation is moving towards a point of volumes being rendered, rather than surfaces.

I've noticed that you said spherical textures with materials. Does your plug-in work for normal maps and bump maps correctly? Because I'm having problems with the standard Projection maps when using bump maps and normal maps. See here

Would this plug-in fix this problem? Cause if it would, that would be great!

[JohnArtbox]

Zen Psycho: Some of this can be achieved in AM using translucency, although it's time consuming and doesn't, to my knowledge, address the thickness of the model.
Matt: It's not spherical mapping, but if you shape is close to spherical, it should work just as well. The other option is to decal the surfaces.

[MattWBradbury]

I know you can do decalling, but it never terns out quite right.

[JohnArtbox]

Natural Media Test...Kandinsky eat your heart out

Attached File(s)

 CameraMove.mov ( 595.19k ) Number of downloads: 182

 

[KenH]

Very unique style! Is that how the Jack short is going?

[JohnArtbox]

Not sure Ken....
it certainly cuts down on render times but I like the current look.
After your comment I decided to see what a BMS Kapsule would look like
BitMapStyle Kapsule

[martin]

John. I hope you're basking in the glow of your success. This is indeed a cool "look." Wallow in it. You deserve the kudos.

[JuLy]

...

Hello,

Im sorry guys but im really bad at this kind of stuff i dont even know ho to get it to work or what to do first!! I suck i admitted and i need some kind of tutorial or something.. can someon help me out...

tankx, in advance...
JuLy

[JohnArtbox]

New technique, I used AM Composite to combine two BitMapStyle renders using a shadow buffer.
The improvement is in the rendering of the shadow texture, plus you can use zbuffer and raytrace shadows.

JuLy:I'll try to do a video tut over the next couple of weeks, but it's busy at the moment.

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[Rodney]

Very cool John!