Smear 3D

Thought we could have a thread on the subject of creating faux 3D images with the Smear component and related stuff.

My bad: the actual name of the component is Smudge, not Smear...

In here, the image that controls the Trail amount is analogous to a height (or displacement) map.

Two other useful things to Smudge offset are:

1) the height map itself

2) a gradient

Both of these give you a "3D" bump map that matches up with the offset image in the first example.

For a Surface filter, you can use the Smudged Height map as height.

Nice tutorial ThreeDee Been following along with something simple. Lots of fun in this

Another very handy 3D tool is the scale component.

If you make a gradient with 0 at the top and 2 (HDR) at the bottom, you have an instant perspective transformation tool.

If you change the percentage of the Scale component, you get anything between no perspective to full horizon-at-the-top-of-the-image perspective transformation.

Now, let me jump ahead and combine some of these things.

Notice that I have blended a vertical gradient (with 100% multiply) on the perspective image that feeds into the Trail inputs. This is so that the trail gets less and less as we go toward the horizon.

All of a sudden, we have a complete "3D" image!

In case some of the settings are unclear from the screenshot, here's the above filter.

Smudge 3D Example.ffxml

Great !!! I will try to use all this you have shown here





Thanks very much again for making this

Different particles give you different 3D shapes.

Notice the Rotate component right after the bomber. It enables you to rotate the scene around.

If you make the background (the space between the objects) transparent (instead of black), you can reverse the Smudge with the result of turning the objects upside down. In this case, you will have to both change the angle of the smear by 180 degrees and select the Reverse box of the Smudge component.

The nice thing about reversing the Smudge is that you can then combine the two and get objects that have height information in both directions.

Here I have additionally made the filter a Surface filter so I can use the height information to control lighting.

Here's the filter. I turned off AO as it doesn't contribute much. Without it, the filter is even reasonably fast.

Smudge 3D Geometrics.ffxml

Cool, I´ll play with that tonight

Thanks for taking the time to make these

Yup, was done with a render from Spiral Gradient

Keep experimenting and you can make something like this:

Wow Indigo ! Another wonder ! Looking forward for the snippet of the second image (if you want to share it with us). The first one seems very good for creating sea floors. The second one should be very useful for creating beautiful landscapes.

Anyway, all I see in this thread is my cup of tea

Thanks ThreeDee, Indigo Ray and Sharandra for sharing with us. You are generous persons.

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Making 3d perspective filters into surface filters (see ThreeDee's silver and colorful shapes) isn't the most accurate way to do lighting. It makes the objects look flatter as they get farther away. Instead, we can use the derivative component to simulate light shining on the scene. Use the derivative component before using the scale component.

Yes, thanks Indigo. It is definitely better to do the shading in other ways, as Surface filter both slows down the rendering and makes the artifacts much more visible. Derivative is a very good way to get fast, accurate shadows while keeping the filter a Simple filter.

Spherical 3D Displacement Previewer

Here is the displaced sphere texture previewer. I can't submit it to the library as it has external images as color inputs. In brief, you use it as follows:

1) Output (save) the diffuse, bump and specular maps from a filter of your choice
2) Load the diffuse, bump and specular maps into this previewer and adjust lighting to taste.

I submitted a "light" version of the same to the Library. It uses the current image only and creates the bump and reflection/specular maps from it.

Spherical 3D Displacement Previewer.ffxml

HOW TO USE THIS FILTER OF Spherical 3D Displacement Previewer

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ThreeDee wrote: In brief, you use it as follows: 1) Output (save) the diffuse, bump and specular maps from a filter of your choice 2) Load the diffuse, bump and specular maps into this previewer and adjust lighting to taste.

Thanks to the help given by Skybase I know now how to use this maps, and want to make here a mini tutorial for others users that probably do not know how this can be done

1 - Select a filter of your choice (MUST be one that have a "Lighting" tab next to "Settings" tab, so this means that this is a surface filter)

2 - Select the preset you want and make all the settings as you want

3 - When finished and ready go to the the following menu: Filter -> Render Maps -> Diffuse map

4 - Filter Forge will then render ONLY the diffuse map

5 - Go to File -> Save Image as and save it with the name you want but knowing that this is the diffuse map

6 - Now go to the menu Filter -> Render Maps -> Bump map

7 - Save this also in the same way

8 - Now go to Filter -> Render Maps -> Specular Strenght Map

9 - Save it also

10 - If needed you can also go to menu Filter -> Render Maps -> Specular Exponent Map

11 - Choose the size resolution you want the final result to have by using the File -> New Image

12 - And then load back these maps into the ThreeDee´s filter and adjust lighting and settings as you want.

A FOLDER FOR EACH GROUP OF MAPS

I suggest that you make a new folder with the name of the filter and then save inside the folder the 3 maps with the diffuse map, bump map and specular map names so it will be very easy to load them inside the filter.

RENDER MAPS GRAYED OUT ?

If the Render Maps in the Filter menu are not available is because this filter does NOT use the surface and lighting (does not have a "Lighting" tab next to "Settings" tab), so you will have to choose another one.

Here below is how it looks when render maps are not available

Threedee, with your spherical mapping, is there a way to rotate the sphere with the texture on it?

More specifically, I´m trying to figure out a way to change the view of my water lilys from a top to a perspective view.

Hi Sharandra,

It is pretty easy to add rotation, but you won't see the back side since the filter doesn't render it.

Anyways, here's the filter with some modifications that allow you to rotate the sphere, scale down the image and invert the height map.

TD

Spherical Previewer 2.ffxml