8. Textures

To Load a Bump Shader:

To load a bump shader, either

This will bring up the Displacement Shaders library. Double-click on one of the shaders in this library and it will be loaded in the Material Editor. (Fig. 8.10)

Fig. 8.10

Fig. 8.11

If you want to use a greyscale image for your bump map, click on the icon inside the Displacement Shaders panel that looks like an eye. (Fig. 8.11)

Then, click on the little red arrow in the Bump window of the Material Editor (if it's not open yet) to access the options for the bump shaders. Now click inside the Bump window or click on the button titled "Caligari", and navigate to the folder where the image file is. Double-click on it to load it into the Bump window. You can tile this image with the U Repts and V Repts options (enter the number or use the little arrows), and set the height of the bump map with the Amp value.

Reflectance Shaders

To load a reflectance shader, either

This will bring up the Reflectance Shaders library. Double-click on one of the shaders in this library and it will be loaded in the Material Editor. (Fig. 8.12)

Fig. 8.12. 

Fig. 8.13

If you expand the panel by clicking on the little red arrow, you can change the relevant values of the chosen reflectance shader. If you want more precise, numerical control, then right-click within this panel and you'll get another window, called shader attributes, where you can enter the values numerically. (Fig. 8.13)

Transparency

To set the transparency of your object, click on the Transparency icon in the Color panel and hold down the left button of your mouse. Three choices will appear: no transparency, plain transparency and transparency map. (Fig. 8.14)

If you choose plain transparency, a little bar will appear on the bottom of the Color panel, where you can set the amount of the transparency. The more you move the slider to the right, the more transparent your object will be. If you click on the little red arrow to show the parameters, you'll also be able to enter the transparency value numerically (0-1). The lower the number, the more transparent the object. (Fig. 8.15)

Fig. 8.14

Fig. 8.15

If you choose the transparency map option, a new window called "Transparency" will appear. Click inside this window. The Transparency Map Browser comes up. Navigate to the transparency map you want and double-click on it. Now the transparency map is loaded. (Fig. 8.16)

Fig. 8.16

Fig. 8.17 

Fig. 8.18

In the pictures above, I loaded a TGA  file for the texture and loaded the same image file for the transparency map. TGA files include the alpha channel (which stores the transparency information). When you load a TGA image file for the transparency map in trueSpace, trueSpace will extract the alpha channel (Fig. 8.17). The black area will be transparent and the white area will be opaque when rendered, i.e. it will show the texture from your texture map or the pattern of the procedural shader. The rendered image is on the right (Fig. 8.18).

You can also use other image file formats for the texture (e.g. JPEG, BMP, etc.), and make the transparency map by making the parts that you want transparent black, and the parts that you want to show white, then save this black-and-white image under a new file name. (Of course, you can also use different shades of gray, in a transparency map, it doesn't have to be pure black and white - then the amount of transparency will vary according to the shade of gray.) Then, load this black-and-white image for your transparency map. If you load a color image file (not a TGA file) for your transparency map in trueSpace, trueSpace will automatically make it a black-and-white image. However, this image might have gray areas, which would make the rendered texture semi-transparent.

You can also use transparency shaders, which you can open from the library (1) or by right-clicking on the "Transparency: none" icon in the Color panel (2) (Fig. 8.19).

Fig. 8.19