Jvdl's Advice on creating the ChromLumTexture ChromLum Map
So far we've pretty much justified that "ChromLumTexture ChromLum" could, and most probably does, stand for "Chrome Luminance (or Luminosity)". I personally believe it's safe to scratch the "Chrome"-part and to place a focus on the "Luminance"-part.
Luminance is a wide known term used in photography which roughly translates to the brightness of light. If we take the time to look this term up in the dictionary we find the following:
- Luminance; Optic, the quantitative measure of brightness of a light source or an illuminated surface, equal to luminous flux per unit solid angle emitted per unit projected area of the source or surface.
Now what does this mean in REFLEX track building terms?
- The ChromLumTexture ChromLum Alpha Channel justifies the brightness of the lightning used on your track. A brighter alpha equals a brighter track (open areas such as fields with minor vegetation). A darker alpha equals a darker track (closed areas such as stadium's or forests.)
- The ChromLumTexture ChromLum Image specifies the tinting of the light source. If you use a lot of red colour tones in your ChromLum Image, you'll find that your track has a red tint spread across it's surface (great for a desert setting for example).
Alpha Channel:
What is the best way to create a ChromLumTexture ChromLum Alpha Channel in a nut shell? (START BUILDING YOUR ALPHA IN THE REGULAR LAYER TAB, AND NOT THE CHANNEL TAB!)
- Starting Out: Start out with a 50% grey fill.
- Accenting Your Jumps: Take your displacement map and separate the jumps and corners from the elevation changes. Once done so add this on a new layer on top of the grey fill and set the layer to "screen". Make sure that the jumps and berms are of equal brightness.
- Defining Your Track Path: Create a new layer and start drawing rough tire marks that follow the track path with a black fill. Set the opacity of this layer to something to your own taste (personally I'd go for +/- 50%). The higher the opacity, the darker the rutting the will be.
- Creating Atmosphere: This step is to make sure you're track doesn't appear to be located in the middle of nowhere. Create a new layer and lay down even more tire marks, only OUTSIDE the track this time (think of both bike and other vehicle marks). Use a slightly lower opacity than the tire marks you created in step 3.
- Creating Atmosphere: This step is to create atmosphere. Create a new layer and start brushing in various details on the surface (think of cracks, accenting rocky areas or creeks, etc.). Use lighter tints there where the surface is supposed to be dry, and darker tints where the surface is supposed to be wet or semi-wet.
- Accent Object Placement: This step will be added once we have object placement available.
- Straight To Finish: Save your document as a layered document (.PSD for example) and call it "ChromLumAlpha" or similar. When you did so right click any layer inside your layer tab and select "Flatten Image". Once you did so hit CTRL+A followed by CTRL+C. Close the file WITHOUT SAVING. Now open your "Custom_ChromLum.texture.bmp"-file and go towards the alpha tab, selecting "Alpha 1" and hitting CTRL+V. - You have now added a proper ChromLumTexture ChromLum Alpha to your "Custom_ChromLum.texture.bmp"-file.
ChromLumTexture ChromLum Image:
What is the best way to create a ChromLumTexture ChromLum Image in a nut shell?
- I have yet to tackle all possibilities for the ChromLumTexture ChromLum Image. In simple terms, and with the knowledge I have gathered so far, there really isn't much more to it than adding colour shades (preferably with a soft brush) there where you want your terrain to be tinted with the colour shade you've selected. Using darker colour shades is advised as these come across much more natural (I never seen bright neon tinted dirt or other surfaces that can be found in nature before at least).
Hope this helps. Will update when I have gathered more information that is worth sharing. (LAST UPDATE: 16 Feb 2011)
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