The issue we've been running into with procedural bumpmaps has to do with topologies more complex than spheres or tori, such as landscape with multiple caves and holes (our prior show!). In such situations we tend to use procedural textures since they can be easily applied in a seamless fashion via a 3D spatial coordinate system.
Unfortunately, while RGB results are fine for where the surface intersects the spatial texture coordinates, it doesn't work for bump map vector space. You need to create a 2D texture map for bumps to work. So the situation where you most want to use procedural coordinate mapping (really annoying topologies) is the situation where you aren't allowed to use it!
Thus the question, does the Zbump node work for procedural textures using spatial coordinates?
-Brad
> -------Original Message-------
> Thanks Scott,
>
>
> I've recently been revisiting procedural and image based bumps and one of
> the things I picked up on with a bit of help from the guys at Glassworks
> was the Zbump node. There's a couple of advantages to this. Firstly, you
> can use it to get around the limitations imposed by the need to have a
> magic bump toggle in nodes that contribute to a bump tree ; for example,
> you can use it with a mix2nodes as input, which you can't do with the
> bump generator (sorry Scott, didn't know about it at the time). And
> secondly the quality, especially with fine detail, goes through the roof.
> It's a great thing to have in the toolbox.
>
>
> --------------------
> FROM: owner-xsi(at)Softimage.COM [mailto:owner-xsi(at)Softimage.COM] ON
> BEHALF OF Scott C. Lange
> SENT: 23-March-2006 17:59
> TO: XSI(at)Softimage.COM
> SUBJECT: RE: bump mapping with procedural textures?
>
>
> Brett,
>
> Check out the ?bump mapping? tutorial by Kim Aldis on either
> the soft site (for version 3, I think) or eharriss.com. Kim explains how
> this works really well.
>
> Scott
>
>
> --------------------
>
>
> FROM: owner-xsi(at)Softimage.COM [mailto:owner-xsi(at)Softimage.COM] ON BEHALF
> OF B Miller
> SENT: Thursday, March 23, 2006 12:41 PM
> TO: xsi
> SUBJECT: bump mapping with procedural textures?
>
>
> Hi All,
>
> This must be perfectly obvious to anyone who has used XSI for longer
> than a month, but it's a bit of a mystery to me. How do you set up a
> render tree to use a procedural texture (e.g. a Cell, Cloud or Fractal)
> to drive a bump map. It seems that I can only get images to work
> properly. I've set the Enable Bump Mapping on the precedural, run it
> through a bumpmap generator, converted the color to vector and plugged
> it directly in, etc. No luck.. What"s the proper method?
>
> thanks
>
> Brett
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