50% Grey Midpoint in Maya Diplacement

Maya displacement is something that I avoid using as much as possible.

I've always maintained that my reluctance is because I don't have much experience with sculpting (Though I've used Mudbox a little bit), and that no matter how I do it, greyscale displacement maps never look as nice as a normal map.

That being said, I've discovered that greyscale normal maps don't import into Maya correctly (to my view).

Logically, I would expect a value of 50% grey to not change the displacement of an object at all, while white would be the equivalent of 100% displaced up, and black 100% displaced down.

Maya by default takes black as no displacement and white as 100% displaced up.

In order to fix this, you need to put the following formula into the Alpha Offset slot of the file node which holds the displacement image:

=-0.5*%FILE%.alphaGain

Where %FILE% is the name of the file node (or texture node if you're not using a file). We use the value of -.5 to shift the midpoint down 50% from white to mid grey. 

Your displacement should now work correctly.

Brilliant Lighting Book: Light for Visual Artsits by Richard Yot

A few weeks ago I finally received my copy of Light for Visual Artists by Richard Yot. I wasn't really sure what to think of this book, as it wasn't squarely aimed at 3D artists, but is a bit more of a general reference.

It really is a marvelous book for 3D artists. Although it doesn't hold your hand and show you how to create each effect in 3D, it's a great resource listing many types of light and examples of each.

It covers basic studio lighting setups, outdoor and indoor light, natural light, various shadow properties, the way light reacts to different types of materials like chrome and translucent objects, colour bleeding and everything in between. I especially love the way each type of lighting discussed comes with the same picture of a white ball on a white background, so you can compare with other chapters and study the differences.

Although many of the subjects covered are not new, and anyone who has studied light in a decent capacity will probably know most of the contents, this book still has fantastic value as a reference tool, a cheat sheet for whatever you're working on.

I'm very impressed and would recommend this to anyone interested in lighting, both in 3D, 2D, and even film/photography.

Here's a link to the Publisher's website where you can see some example pages and a chapter list, and a link to Richard Yot's website where he's got a lot of great content under the tutorials section.

sIBL: Fast, Free and Fabulous-looking Image Based Lighting

Today it's my birthday, and what better way to celebrate it than to give you all a present!

I found this neat little program/script/plugin for 3D applications called sIBL.

Image based lighting is a great way to integrate your 3D models into a real-world photo and create a realistic lighting environment for your CG work. Unfortunately, while it’s not hard to set up (in Maya at least), neither is it easy to get it looking great while still rendering very quickly.

sIBL is an external tool, independent of any 3D software which creates fast and splendid looking scripts for various 3D packages to encorporate image based lighting. Best of all, it’s absolutely free.

The team at HDR Labs also have a big library of free HDRIs tailored for use with sIBL that are easy to use and look fantastic.

I had a brief play with it for our paper puppet film, Keeping Station, and it worked perfectly. So at the risk of sounding like their marketing department is paying me, check it out!