how would I go about making this?
 

I'm in the middle of modeling a 1gb flash drive and I'm wondering how I'm going to make the M. I've already made the circle area it is in but I don't know how to go about putting the M in there? Any suggestions? Should this be something that is modelled in or added as a bump map later? I'm trying to make this as realistic as possible, so any advice for this would be great.

Thanks

sorry forgot to post the image

http://cache.gizmodo.com/assets/reso...orex_flash.jpg

Displacement map :x

don't know anything about those but I'm willing to learn to get this looking the way I want it. Thanks for the quick reply.

Any other ideas I'm all ears... err eyes... willing to try multiple ideas, if there are any more.

Thanks

Yeah a displacement map would do the job, there just like bumps in their colours etc etc, just that actually create geo at render time.

YOu could modle the M and then use a boolian op to emboss it, as long as, you dont mind doing the clean up or is's already for rendering.

And if you really want to see the M in the viewport as well, I believe there is a function under modify? that is Bake Displacement Map or some such. Anyone use that utility much? I'm pretty sure it's usually only useful for terrain displacement on a plane...

where do you "put" the displacement map (what "slot")
whats the point in a bump map when we have displacement maps?

Ive been meaning to ask that for so long now, and since were on the subject.....

thats a good good question elephant

my other question is, would the whole m and the little swoosh thing above it and the bumpy texture be one displacement map? Anyone know of any tutorials on displacement maps to kind of guide me a long on this? Maybe they're in the help files? Haven't looked yet.

Displacement maps...

create a color node, eg file... under color balance, check Alpha is Luminance. Connect the outAlpha to displacement of a Displacement node. Connect displacement node to displacement map within the shader's parent... not to the blinn or lambert or phong, but to (I don't know the terminology) the node that the shader is connected to... you'll have to view all connections in the hypershade view to find it. Anyway, once you've done that, to change the distance that black and white displace, you change the file node's alpha settings within the color balance tab.

i was wondering this myself, and it's something i'm going to have to find out... well... i could leave out displacement maps and just refer to norml and bump maps

but, a bump map is where you use a single channel (greyscale) to determine where a bump should be
bump maps don't actually add any geometry or adjust any geometry, they just tell the renderer how to colour that particular pixel
a displacement map actually changes the geometry on rendertime.
To quote wikipedia "to cause an effect where the actual geometric position of points over the textured surface are displaced, often along the local surface normal, according to the value the texture function evaluates to at each point on the surface"

why you would use displacement map instead of bump map or the other way round is still a mystery to me... i think it would depend on the grapgics engine your work will port out to. i dont think the Steam engine supports displacement maps, but it does support normal maps

and sorry Rhetoric, i dont know any tutorials using displacement maps... havent seen any, its all bump or normal mapping



but then... i havent looked for any ;)

That Gnomon DvD covered it well I think, went in depth on a lot of things, check it out.

http://www.thegnomonworkshop.com/dvds/mha04.html

Bumps are generally faster to render as they dont create any geo where as displacements do.

You would use a bump when you want small "displacements" and a displacement where you need a larger movement, as bumps over s cirtian value start to loose definition.

For example I would use a displacment map for the "M" but a bump for the plasticy texture.

Its also worth noting that you can daisy chain bump maps too so you can have multiple bumps attached to "one" channel so to speak, this lets you adjust the individual bump nodes for the files which affects the single materials bump property, pretty useful stuff! So for an example if you wanted to make a desk with scratches on, you owuld generall make one bump map and then connect that to the bump node, having to adjust it in PS to get it looking right, daisy chaning then you cna use one map for the actual wood grain and another map for the scratches and as each map has its own bump node and file you have much more adjustment off the bat.

Nice! I assumed you couldn't use 2 bump nodes on one shader, so I was doing some crazy conversions, layering, and mixing to get, say, 3 files for different levels of bump detail. Thanks!

thanks
wow that sounds confusing but ill have a crack at it :beer: