Good Displacement Map tut for high-res images?

[RobertAsh]

Hi,

I'd like to wrap some objects around some others in a photo. e.g., wrap branches around an egg. I've seen a couple of displacement map tutorial videos but the authors are both working on low-res 72dpi web images. Their displacement settings for Filter > Distort > Displace Horizontal Scale and Vertical Scale are both 5 pixels.

That setting pair has no visible effect on my high-res images, and using settings of 50 or 500 pixels warps the wrapped image beyond recognition, especially at the edges, which is not what I want.

Sorry if I'm not being clear but if you could suggest a good tutorial or video (or settings for high-res images) I'd appreciate it.

Other suggestions/approaches besides displacement maps are welcome, of course! Thanks!

[Tony W]

Hi Robert, Russel Brown normally has very interesting stuff I found This article by him which may be helpful.

[Chain]

3D software would provide you with a better result than a displacement map, but would be a lot more advanced (perhaps too complex if you have no 3D experience)... The advantage would be that you can freely model complex shapes to map textures to.

For simpler object shapes I believe the 3D functions of Photoshop Pro should do the trick easily (ps: you can also import meshes). I'm not very familiar with the 3D functions in Photoshop, but I did a little test where I made a sphere with some "ligntning" and placed it over an photo of Mercury. Had to made a separate diffuse and opacity map, and set the renderer to not render backfaces.
Btw; "ray traced final" is incredibly slow, if one quality setting lower is enough then use that.

planet.jpg

With both methods resolution/size is not an issue (just takes longer to render).

Edit:
In Photoshop you can make an egg-shaped mesh by making a path of an intersection, then making a "repousse" 3D object (effectively it makes a mesh by rotating the path around an axis in 3D space).

egg.png

[des151]

Robert,
Have you tried the puppet warp tool? http://tv.adobe.com/watch/the-russel...pet-warp-tool/ http://layersmagazine.com/photoshop-...ppet-warp.html
Ray

[Jerryb]

hi ,
my thoughts... first I like to thak you , your question helped me understand..

1. at end of this post is a quote on what the hor and vert numbers means.... sometime knowing that helps understand... this info was hard to find... most says nothing and only 1 or 2 will say "it effects impact"

2. it best to use a smart filter for your displace, those hor and vert numbers, are chosen based on what good for the image,, in the tutorials they don't tell that they experimented before they found values that they liked... so using smart filter you can much easier experiment with different values..

3. the EDGE issue you mentioned... about the only thing i found suggested to eliminate that is make the displayment map a little smaller than the target image..

4. these are couple of tutorials that have, for me, little nuggest of info that buried...lol... , but you probably know most of it already.... i am just a novice..

http://photoshoptutorials.ws/photosh...all-pages.html

http://www.thetazzone.com/photoshop-...lacement-maps/

hope all of this is usefull...smiling...




"The Displace filter shifts a selection using a color value from the displacement map—0 is the maximum negative shift, 255 the maximum positive shift, and a gray value of 128 produces no displacement. If a map has one channel, the image shifts along a diagonal defined by the horizontal and vertical scale ratios. If the map has more than one channel, the first channel controls the horizontal displacement, and the second channel controls the vertical displacement.

The filter creates displacement maps using a flattened file saved in Adobe Photoshop format. (Bitmap mode images are unsupported.)

Choose Filter > Distort > Displace.
Enter the scale for the magnitude of the displacement.
When the horizontal and vertical scale are set to 100%, the greatest displacement is 128 pixels (because middle gray produces no displacement).
If the displacement map is not the same size as the selection, specify how the map fits the image—select Stretch To Fit to resize the map or Tile to fill the selection by repeating the map in a pattern.
Choose Wrap Around or Repeat Edge Pixels to determine how undistorted areas of the image are treated.
Click OK.
Select and open the displacement map. The distortion is applied to the image.

[Chain]

Originally Posted by RobertAsh

I'd like to wrap some objects around some others in a photo. e.g., wrap branches around an egg.

A displacement map (bump map) is not good enough for that. It is only for minor displacements, like making the text wavy to fit on the flag, or creating some distortions behind the cracked glass, or making the paint on the brick wall appear to follow the rough surface.

If you need to map something onto a sphere, it is unfortunately useless. For that, you should use the 3D functions (see my above post) or 3rd party software (In the sphere case you could also try filter > distort > spherize for a quick fix).

Ps; if you're having trouble with the edges of your displacement, see if keeping the depth of that area at 128 (50% gray in the depth map). Then the edges won't be displaced.

[RobertAsh]

Jerry,
Welcome to the Forums! And thanks for the articles.

Tony,
Thanks for the Russell Brown article. Unfortunately he's using single-digit displacement amounts, which have zero effect on my high-res images. Maybe they work for text but not for warping objects around other objects in the images I'm working with. But maybe the Liquify Tool or Distort feature will do something, it's worth a try.

Ray,
Hadn't thought about using Puppet Warp, thanks I think it would take a looong time and I'd need to save my work often but it's worth a try. But maybe in the short term it would be faster than learning a 3D package.

Chain,

You confirmed my worst fear..... I was suspecting Displace wasn't industrial strength but wanted to give the community here an oppty to prove me wrong just in case I was mistaken in what I thought. Unfortunately I was right.....

Adobe's advanced tools often are good for doing basic tasks well, but doing complex or exceptionally demanding tasks often requires using another product. But that's what keeps the market sharp and plug-in/companion companies in business, filling in those gaps. Adobe's a great platform that other companies can build products on -- or for.

The good news may be that I finally have a compelling use case to learn 3D. I have a computer science background so I'm confident I can learn it but of course everything new and complex takes a learning curve. Plus I don't have Photoshop Extended, just vanilla Photoshop CS5.

Are there any reasonably priced 3rd party packages that could help with this project better than Photoshop Extended could do, or would it just be best to pay a $350 upgrade to CS5 Extended?

Also, what are your thoughts about Puppet Warp vs. going 3D?

[Chain]

A bit unfair to say adobes displacement filter is bad because it cannot do something that displacement maps (bump maps) cannot do... That being said, it is old and could use an upgrade (sub-pixel accuracy, adjusting the depth in the filter, more formats, etc.).

For a free fully-powered 3d program, i would check out www.blender.org (i haven't used it myself). It might be overkill, but the only easier option i know is photoshop pro (ps: a free trial should last 30 days). Perhaps if you have some more examples of what you need it for? Easier to give exact answers when so much depends on the image...

Puppet warp is not useful for 3D distortion, only 2D. Liquify or warp would be better (try them out, just in case they are adequate for your needs).

[Tony W]

Robert,
Sorry that the link did not help in any way. I have only ever used displace for improving the look of texture in an image e.g. false grafitti on a wall etc.

I have used the Warp tool and liquify to give the illusion of a wrapped image you may find it would work ok. The egg and tree branches example sounds possible to do using these tools.

Nice examples Chain

[RobertAsh]

Tony,

No need to apologize, my friend You are always more than helpful. That tutorial gave me good ideas:

1. to use the Liquify tool with Displacement maps (I'd never thought of using other tools together with Displacement maps).
2. to use the Warp tool per your note

Also, using huge displacement figures did have some good effect in the center of the image though it destroyed the edges. Maybe there's a way to use the maps multiple times, once or more in each section of the image.

Between your recommendations and Ray's, and then Jerry's notes and Chain's recommendations for 3D approaches I think this will work one way or another as well as providing a nice tool kit of techniques that can work either on this project or future projects.

[RobertAsh]

Chain,

Thanks. Fair enough regarding my displacement filter assessment. I'm new enough to distortion tools that I don't know the strengths/weaknesses of each very well yet. This is my first displacement map attempt. I do think the tut authors would do well to cite the limitations of the tool, but so be it.....

I'll download Blender, have been wanting an excuse to try 3D To save time I'll work with some techniques I'm learning from some DVDs along with Warp, Puppet Warp, etc. and Liquify and see if those do the trick.

This has been a very instructive thread, thanks everyone!