Painting Bump Texture Map in Photoshop CS4

There are different kinds of texture maps that you can paint inside Photoshop. The most common is Diffuse, which is the color of the 3D object. Diffuse is the main texture map we been using in the past tutorials but there are many other texture maps as well.

These other texture maps beside Diffuse are Bump, Glossiness, Opacity, Shininess, Self-Illumination, and Reflectivity. Another commonly use texture map is Normal Map, which takes the Red Green and Blue information to create small details, but we won’t be talking about Normal Map here.

Let’s start with the bump texture map.

1. First, import in the 3D object into Photoshop, then select the 3D layer and in the Paint On drop down menu, select Bump. The Bump texture map only read black, white and the gray values. Black will decrease the surface of the 3D object, white is the original value and grays are somewhere in between.

2. Select a brush to start painting on the bump texture map for the first time, you might get this message. “Could not use the brush tool because the current 3D engine, color mode or render mode does not support paining.” If you don’t see this message, skip to #3.

To fix this, go to: Edit / Preferences / Performance

Play around the CPU Settings and click on the Advance Settings button. You must restart Photoshop after you make any changes.

3. Now try painting the bump texture map, if you don’t have a bump texture map. This message will pop up, “One or more materials in this 3D layer are missing a Bump texture. New Bump texture(s) will be created for those materials to enable editing.”

Click OK to let Photoshop create the bump texture map. Now you can use black, white or grays color paint brush to paint directly on the bump texture map or you can directly paint on the 3D object.

4. You can use the clone tool to clone information from different documents onto the bump texture map, but if you do that make sure it is in grayscale because bump texture map only read black, white and grays. No colors.

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