The Mysteries of the Ornamentals

Lots of people have asked about our Ornamental Textures collection and one of the most commonly asked questions is "Are you going to offer the designs in other textures than silver and gold?" As you may know the free sample textures from this collection are finished in 3 different wood tones. Well, to answer your question, we had originally planned to offer the Ornamental Textures in a separate all-wood volume, but we later decided that it just isn't necessary. What we really needed to do was to help folks understand how easy they can be to use with ANY other texture, bitmapped or procedural! Otherwise, we'd be turning out CD after CD of different textures with the same designs instead of new design collections = which we'd much rather do. So here goes..

Fact number 1: You can use our Ornamental Textures with virtually any other texture you have on practically any model in most any 3D graphics package and even Photoshop or PaintShop.

We'll have to assume here that you have some working knowledge of your graphics software. The principles are the same across most platforms from Bryce to Maya and others. We'll be using 3DS Max.

In your 3D application create an object. Any kind of primitive will do or you can use a model. We're just going to use a cylinder for this. In 3DS Max we'll apply the UVW Map modifier and then create a material with a nice finished wood.

Simple enough, so far. Here comes the hard part.

Select the Ornamental Texture that you want to use, select the Surface Solution for that texture and put it in the Bump Channel of your material at whatever strength you feel is appropriate.

I'm using the Surface Solution at about 35 and I've chosen a standalone ornament so I've clicked off tiling and taken a moment to center the design.

That's about everything. Render.

There. That's why it would be a bit redundant for us to create new finishes for these textures. If you've been working along with me, you should have what appears to be an applique protruding from your finished wood surface.

Ah! You say you wanted a design carved into the wood, not a raised from it? Here's a neat trick. Change the strength of the bump channel by simply placing a minus sign in front. I'm changing the 35 to -35. Render again!

How's that? Now was that as hard as you thought? Up to this point there's very little difference between Max and most other 3D apps as to how this is done and most of you are quite familiar with this process, but for some reason many of you overcomplicate this.

In their simplest form, this is how the Ornamental Textures are used. There are many more effects one can achieve with these, but the procedures tend to vary quite a bit from one application to another.

Using a 'blend' or 'mixed' material and/or different map channels, you can use these as a 3D decal to add an applique with a different wood tone..

..or even the metal tones that are included on the CD

..and they don't only work with wood. It's a snap to add character to metal, stone, plastics and other materials to beautify that boring spaceship or mausoleum

So we won't be adding new finishes to the Ornamental Textures collections, but then again, nothing around here is really carved in stone.

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