A good read?

[HeadlessBill]

Let me know if it's too dark. It looked fine on my PowerBook, but once I brought it over to my wife's iMac, it looked really dark.

 

Anyhow, comments, questions and general observations of life are greatly appreciated.

 

[Ross Smith]

Bill, the bumps are good, but they seem to vanish within a peculiar rectangle that bounds the alien title text.

 

Now, this might just be random, but this is my guess -- the text has a bump map of its own, and it's overriding the general bump map of the book. I've tried to find a way to make bump maps intersect rather than override, and I was never very successful at it. Is that the case here?

 

Otherwise, the picture itself looks a little dark, but it's good. What does the title say? "To Serve Man"? "Necronomicon"?

[HeadlessBill]

Actually, the flat patches around the text was intentional (most leather bound books I've seen usually have a flat area where the titles were to be printed or gilded). I had the opposite problem you had. The bump maps I tried using for the text just combined with the bump created by the material and made it hard to read. I had to create an area of patches that floats just a smidge above the actual surface of the face and spine of the book and applied the text decal to those.

 

I wish I would have thought of those titles, though 'Don't Panic' would have been my more of something I would have used. I actually used the title of a short story I wrote way back in college in one of my fiction writing class.

 

Thanks for the reply.

[HeadlessBill]

Okay, I made some variants of the book and would like an opinion as to which one looks best for the area where the label goes. The image in the first post has been changed to show the three variants.

 

I may change it later so the cover of the books are something other than black so you can see the detail better.

 

Edit: Okay, I added the picture with blue covers rather than black.

[PlJack]

I really like number three.

Maybe its just closer but the text looks much cleaner.

[Dearmad]

Not 2.

 

1 or 3.

 

I choose 3 because: the text is "anchored" to the book better- looks less like its floating.

[starwarsguy]

definitely 3 for me

[mtpeak2]

My 2 cents is #2 if you can get the flat plane recessed slightly and the letters raised from it. Boolean cutter for the flat and a bump map for the lettering posssibly. Books of that type are more of a stamp which make the flat plane recessed and the lettering equal to the plane of the texture of the book. #1 looks good but cheap (painted on), #3 looks like it is glued on to the book. The texturing of the book itself looks great though.