Hello,
I’m working on a tutorial for textures on Cycles Render on Blender and I’m having a slight problem. From the tutorial that I’m watching, Andrew Price is using Photoshop and changing the texture into a greyscale image for the Bump Map. Now I have Paint.net 4.03 and we (My Dad and I) just added new plug-in’s and I used the Black and White Converter. Will this do for the greyscale for my Bump map?
Any other suggestions will be much appreciated.
Thanks 
gmmonllor
Sure, just pass the texture through a “RGB to BW” node (convertor > RGB to BW) before plugging it into the bump slot to convert it into a “true” grayscale image so that Cycles can best evaluate it. So your node setup should be (bumpmap texture -> RGB to BW -> output)
You can skip the “RGB to BW” node if your image is a true grayscale image (AKA a grayscale image in linear color-space) but I’m not sure that Paint.NET can save to those formats.
Hope it helps.
Holy cow, thank you so much!
also be aware
Converting a RGB to G and using that image
most images have shading in them ( from the sun or a light )
and this makes them VERY BAD to use as a height map
for example
the SAME DATA
a shaded gray image , then the real heightmap
