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I'm very new to using MW with Archicad...I need to do a green standing seam metal roof. Is there an easy way to do that with a bump map, if so, can you give me some direction?

I would prefer not to have to model all the standing seams.

I'm trying to stay out of MW Studio and do this inside Archicad (with the use of Photoshop).

Your comments would be appreciated.

Actually just find where the bump map settings are....now to get it to work So far no "luck".

I've been trying to make the bump mapping work in Archicad but can not do it.

Does displacement/bump mapping work in Archicad with the MW plugin?

ArchiCAD bump maps are currently not converted to Maxwell bump maps (support should be added in the future). However not everything is lost - you can do it quite easily using Maxwell MXM materials inside ArchiCAD (and Maxwell plugin).

prepare the desired bump map in Photoshop
open AC material editor
select "Maxwell rendering engine" for "Create preview with" - the dialog changes with MX settings
Select MXM and click on "Create" button (this will create a new MXM material)
Give the material name and location (MXED will start)
Click on "Full wizard" checkbox to open texture part of the dialog
Click on "Textures" checkbox to enable textures
Click on "Bump" button to assign a bump map (the "strength" of the effect is controlled by the parameter at the right
Optionally you can assign a texture (or change a color) for the material
Generate preview of the material in MXED, save it and close - the material will appear in AC material dialog and you can see the preview of it there...

Hope this helps - let me know if you need more details.

Your directions are VERY good and I would be perfectly satisfied with doing it the way you describe, but still not successfull...my terribly ignorance. Maybe I could email you the mxm and texture/alpha image files so that you could quickly tell me what I need to do different.

Well, I've been trying different things to make this bump map work in Archicad. I found out my texture bump map was inverted, but it seems no matter what settings I use, I can not get it to render out.

Any chance you could either fix the mxm file I emailed you or create a very simple vertical line bump map to simulate a standing seam roof with a green color?

This does not look difficult..but somehow it's not working for me. I think if I can see where I went wrong then that would help me much with other textures/bump maps.

I will send you an email with the sample MXM file later on today.

Pavol

OK...am looking forward to it. Have continued to try different things...I can at least see some lines forming, but really not raised up, even with max bump setting.

Hope you can get it out today so that I can work on it tonight. I have something at work where I need to use the MW render plugin for my archicad model....my boss is waiting for it .

I've tried a few more times while waiting...it seems the height does not respond to different settings. I will email you a couple of screen shots to show you what my settings are.

It sounds like you need a normal map to get the results you want.



Purple inlay is the normal map used for the vertical ridges in the background.

Use NVidia's free normal map generator plugin, or for more accurate results Crazy Bump is the daddy.

Tim.

Normal map should help here but if high-quality results are needed (especially along silhouette edges) I suggest to go with displacement mapping.

pelias wrote:Normal map should help here but if high-quality results are needed (especially along silhouette edges) I suggest to go with displacement mapping.

Yes, mine is alternative method which won't be as convincing as displaced geometry.



Tim.

Tim..thx for the input. I'll have to go through the MW manual and see if I can figure out the difference between a bump map and a normal map...I saw the option in the settings. The sample you provided is definitely more effective than the bump maps I tried.

Pavol....tried the displacement map and that worked very well in this instance. Thank you for you help on this.

Question: can a bump/normal map (maybe to distort a surface) be used AND use a displacement map in the same MXM material?