Combining two bump maps in Maya

Sometimes you want to combine two bump maps in Maya. How to do this isn't entierly clear, however. What you need to do is the following:

Let's say we have got two textures, textureA and textureB. We want to use them both as a bump map in maya.

• Connect the two textures to a bump2d-node each
• Connect one of the bump2d-nodes to the other.
• bump2d1.outNormal -> bump2d2.normalCamera
• Done!

The outNormal and normalCamera-attributes can be Hidden, and if you don't see them, check Left Display->Show Hidden and Right Display->ShowHidden in the connection editor.

Interesting read

Pixar has published a lot of papers on their different techniques on they used in their movies. They can be a bit technical, but interesting nonetheless.

http://graphics.pixar.com/

File Formats

.. is not something to be taken easy. I did a little study today, and found out, among other things, the following.

• Although Mental Ray supports the z-channel in OpenEXR, Mental Ray for Maya doesn't.
• RLE is an 8-bit format, but makes for the smoothest workflow when you need a z-channel from Maya to Adobe After Effects.
• iff can be used as a 16-bit format, but isn't widely supported
• Maya has a very short range in it's z-channel (from 0 to 1 at the most)

More points to be added as they show up..