Loading external texture map in Photoshop CS4

So far we had been talking about painting texture maps directly on 3D object and having Photoshop create the texture maps. However you can also load in external texture maps you already have.

When you load in external texture maps, the current settings will be overwrite, except for Bump texture map.

To load external texture map files, look for these little icons, this allow you to load external texture map files or create new one (see image below).

1. Let’s test it out with the Bump texture map, create a new file and create a black and white noise just like this.

2. This would be very hard to paint and would take too long to do if you were to use your paint brush to paint on the 3D object. When you are done, save noise as “bump-map.jpg” to your hard drive.

3. To import into your 3D object, you click on the Filter by: Materials and select the material you want to import the bump texture map into. Go to the Bump Strength and Load Texture.

5. Look for the bump map texture you just created. If you don’t see anything try to increase the “Bump Strength”.

What this mean is that you can more control to create more interesting and more detail texture maps externally. Not only with Bump maps but other texture maps as well. To create a texture map from scratch, just click on the icon and click New Textures…. Select the resolution size and start painting.

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