Bump Keying
Bump Keying is a phrase we've coined for a particular surface construction technique in Lightwave3D. Its purpose is to make adapting complex preset surfaces much more simple than is possible with a normal multi-layered surface.
Pshelf Metal's Copper Aged2 adapted using a simple grayscale UV map
Many of our presets employ multiple surface channels to achieve their various effects. If you wanted to alter these channels to fit your own geometry then this would normally involve manually updating and resizing all those layers. This can be very tedious!
However, with bump keying, the process is reduced down to the creation of a single grayscale image map which, through the use of surface gradients, all other channels use to calibrate their settings. This image is placed in the bump channel of the surface, hence the name Bump Key.
We've produced two comprehensive tutorials that explain and demonstrate the bump key technique in detail. Make sure you also download the project files for these tutorials before beginning.
Learn How the Bump Key technique really works:
BK TutorialBK_Explained.pdf
(464.8 KB)
BK Files
BumpKey_Project.zip
(200.0 KB)
Create your first Bump Key surface:
BK PracticalBK_Practical.pdf
(240.9 KB)
Practical Files
Project_Files.zip
(164.1 KB)
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