add and multi Images

[James Capper]

I know How to create a bump and spec images but how do you create add or multi images from scratch.
And are the any tools that I need for this process

 

[markfaz]

I'd also like to know how to do this.

 

[Eric Tozer]

Basically you just need Photoshop.
The tricky part i guess is working out when & where to use them effectively & how to set them up.
I'll be honest & say i haven't really explored Add & Multi thoroughly myself.
It's something I've been meaning to do.
I've just been so busy lately & trying to get a few things back on track in my offline life.

Here are some Add Multi titbits i copied from a forum in the old RSC days.

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Multi maps should be used for making whole sale changes to the colour of the material.

Add maps should be used for adding extra detail to the material, with out effecting the underlying colour.
Also dont use add maps with materials that use transparency, as they'll add that colour to the transparency colour (i think)
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Cheers

 

[woochoo]

an example of multiply mapping is grassed areas.
say you have a regular 512x512 grass diffuse map, to get some decent detail level from it you tile it but it's easy to see the pattern. you can use a multi map, which will generally (i think) have fairly unsaturated and neutral colours for grass, to break up the tiling of the diffuse map. the idea is to scale the multi map so it is bigger than the diffuse.
so if you have 512x512 diffuse and 512x512 multi, you stretch the multi out to be 2x, 3x, 5x etc bigger and it serves to slightly change the colour of different areas of grass. it's quite similar to the background image blend principle that is featured in btb, where you might use a google earth map.

add is the opposite. you scale it smaller to provide more detail to the diffuese map. when you have t1+add+multi you can get some nice results.
t1=basic map, add=detail, multi=variation

you don't need any nvidia plugins for these, they are just regular maps, assigned to different shader slots. browse through the ISI mas files to get an idea (mills, toban etc). the file names are suffixed with "_add.dds" and "_multa.dds" or something similar, though it is only for ease of identification, not critical to their functioning.