Baking some AO in Bump Mapped textures

[robcat2075]

Bump maps creates the illusion of surface shape details but only in a simple shading manner. They don't change the surface shape.

 

AO and Fake AO depends on actual surface shape to create its shading effect in the recesses and crevices of a model.

 

Here's a surface with a bump map applied. The shading in the recesses represents the direct light only and not the environment illumination

 

 

By processing the bump map we can make another map that shades the recesses approximately the way the ambient light would. Here's that map added as a Diffuse Map to the surface.

 

 

 

Here's the original test image...

 

 

Now blurred with Gaussian Blur... (this is saved and used as the BumpMap)

 

 

 

In Photoshop Other>High Pass filter...

 

 

 

In Photoshop Adjust>Curves to scrunch the grays up closer to white... (this is saved and used as the Diffuse map at 40%)

[Meowx]

Fantastic! The subtle differences between the renders really make a huge difference between "obvious bump map" and "or is it?"

[dblhelix]

thanks for inspiring visuals! my head started to experiment with virtual bump maps immediately.

[robcat2075]

thanks, both of you!

 

I should note that the numerical settings for every filter were eyeball guesstimates. Larger or smaller numbers may work in different situations like if the maps were a higher res.