So I came across a feature in Photoshop that I had never seen before. It is called Vanishing Point. I was new to me and I thought it might be useful to
others so I made a quick tutorial.

Vanishing Point is basically what you would expect; it allows you to move things in perspective. This can, obviously, be quite useful.

To demonstrate I am using this picture of an old greenhouse at my in-laws.
The windows have been damaged by many hurricanes over the years but it refuses to give up. Let’s see… Continue

Displacement maps are the third and most powerful of the common maps.

Displacement maps can use the same black and white image that was developed for the bump map but instead of shifting the image while it stays flat, the Displacement map actually generates geometry by using the map as a heightfield where white is the most displacement and black is the least.

So, instead of appearing to have depth, displacment maps actually give the texture depth.

But because they are creating geometry displa… Continue

Bump maps are the next step in giving a texture some life.

Bump maps adjust the image but don’t actually change geometry, giving the texture the appearance of having depth.

Like transparency maps, bump maps are black and white conversions of the original texture image but probably aren’t as extreme in their conversion, and keep a lot more greys than transparency’s usually do.

… Continue

One of the best ways to get the most out of 3D renderings is the use of maps on your textures.

A lot of times you will see renderings where the textures are and have no depth; they are basically a flat picture pasted on a wall. This is especially bad when the image is repeating and you get a pattern that runs the whole length of the object.

Pretty much every render engine lets users apply maps but I am using Vray for Rhino because of its ease of use and because Rhino great piece of software.… Continue