Another bump-map problem

[Eku]

I know this sort of question gets asked a lot, but I haven't found a good answer. I've been doing some tests with stone wall textures, and I'm having issues with the bump portion. The first render is a Yafray render, with bump settings of .74 on the nor. I've done 2 renders in Indigo, one with the Bump texture set to .01, the other with the Bump at 1.00. The indigo wall looks pretty good, but the trim...yafray's a lot better, eh? Any ideas why? I haven't really changed the default settings anywhere...and clearly, the bump map is working just fine, based on the Yafray render.

These are just tests, but I'd like to get a good idea of what textures will work now before applying them to my model.

[Zom-B]

The bump map for your Yafray render seems to have more contrast on the bumped parts,
because the light is set more from above than the one in Indigo... isn't so??!

[Eku]

Thanks, zomB, but nope, no change from the Yafray to Indigo, as far as textures, lighting, settings specific to Blender, or camera angle. (Yafray obviously has its own GI settings, so that is different.) Note also that the Indigo renders don't smooth out the trim, whereas the Yafray does - I know it has "set smooth" on, I even applied the subsurf to make sure that wasn't the problem. (Does Blendigo take modifiers into account, or do you have to apply them - I can't recall.)

Info I forgot to mention:
-using Blendigo v1.01 with v1.01 Indigo.
-the settings for the bump I mention above were in the "B" catagory, A and C were both 0.
-both Indigo renders were 1 hour for a simple scene (wall, trim, nothing else in it but sun and a ground plane.)

No other settings seem relevant to me, but it seems I'm missing something.

[joegiampaoli]

hmmmmm, ok you didn't change light angle but what about camera ange, is it also the same?

[Kram1032]

@Eku:
It takes into account the mesh, you can see in the viewport. So, the render-subdurf is ignored while the visible preview subdivison is used during export. This is correct for *all* modifiers.

You might need to increase the contrast of your texture or something...
or it's simply a tonemapping issue with the quite gray reinhard - try linear or camera

Changing the camera position won't affect shadows, as long as the *whole* image doesn't get darker / brighter (as reinhard would then change the range according to the new situation) - reflections would change but surely not the shadow...

[Eku]

RE mods: aha, that makes sense then. So basically, the subsurf mod is applied per the "Levels" field, but not the "Render Level" field. OK.

I'll try a more contrasty bump map, but it surprises me that the Yafray version would be so deeply etched while the Indigo version is almost like a tatoo on the surface. I'll also look at the tonemap I used. I'll try 'em out tonight and post back.

I'm still a little confused on the tonemapping thing. I think I need to research this topic a bit. (I'm not familiar with a lot of the terms, I've had to google more than one so far. Looks like I'm not done yet. The manual only really says "this button increases this feature" but never really says what "this feature" is. I had to google "albedo" for instance, so now I know.) Thanks for your help.

[Kram1032]

no problem

Yeah, the manual is quite cryptic in some parts... One Indigouser, filippo, created a new manual, which is supposed to be understood by artists....
Currently, it's Italian and filippo is translating it.

One thing, I forgot: Try to increase the "B" value of your bump map. You'll find it as one of three options under any texture slot "B" will basically linearly tweak the contrast of the texture, which increases the bumpiness when rendering

[joegiampaoli]

Ok, I miread your post you didn't change camera angle sorry 'bout that.

[Eku]

Joe: I noticed that...no prob!

Kram: ok, you were right about the tonemap, I had it turned up to 40, and the attached image looks slightly better, but not great...now I'll try upping the contrast on the image. (By the way, does the Blendigo script take the contrast slider in the Blender texture "Colors" tab into account, or does it just load the texture directly from the file location without altering it? I'm assuming it's takes it directly without reference to Blender material settings.)

[Kram1032]

Well, Blendigo doesn't alter the texture, but Indigo does.
As I said: Simply increase the "B"-value of your bumpmap

[Eku]

Well, here's the same file rendered with B=0.6 (no other changes from the previous one.) Kram: note that the B was 1.0 for the 3rd render from my first post. Something just isn't working right, but since the wall looks pretty good, the culprit has to be the trim bump map itself. I don't get it. My next attemp will be with a higher-res bump map, unless someone out there has another suggestion? My reasoning: it looks to me like the Yafray renderer has smoothed out the bump map, almost like a z-buffer anti-alias [if that makes sense], whereas it looks like Indigo takes it at pixel per pixel face value, which ends up looking like a decal etched on the surface. This is just a trial run, to see how the textures perform, so the texture itself isn't that great - it needs work, clearly. I'm just confused as to why Yafray seems to work well with it, while Indigo doesn't seem to, yet the wall looks so much better with Indigo.

[Kram1032]

why did you *lower* it if the effect is too shallow? xD
It works just fine. try 2...

That map must be very low contrast... usually, "1" is far too much...