found one example for spec map
try it
happy bl
Thanks for taking your time in helping me out, RickyBlender 
How would you suggest I make my texture, when I have ref. photos like the above, and I want to cut out the wood to make my own textures?
Also, I have a persistent problem with making wood: It always looks like plastic!
use Gimp to make each bands tillable easy to do in gimp!
found another nodes set up for spec and nor map
will test it later one but meanwhile you can try it
but this one also needs an Occlusion map
don’t know can you make one ?
happy bl
here is file with not files only 150 KB!
you also forgot to ctrl-a you object and re calculate the normal which is a must for UV map
i also redone the UV mapping
WoodenBeam2.blend (148 KB)
so this is already rendering a lot better then before!
but almost no bumps or nor on this
have to find why !
happy bl
Thank you very much.
Though, I have some questions:
-
What did you change and why?
-
How did you resize my .blend file’s filesize?
did not pack images in and simply compress it when u save it
looks at nodes set up for each beam
you also forgot to set up the UV map in normal node!
trying to see why normal is not working as it should !
happy bl
How do I do this, and why doesn’t the Normal map node use the UV the others are using?
look at your normal map it is redish and not good at all !
there is too much red in this
should be only bluish map
need to redo it to get right bluish normal map !
whic soft did u use to do this map ?
then it should work nicely
happy bl
if u don’t spec it the mapping is normally UV by default !
happy bl
Crazybump.
well you should be able to make a nice bluish map
but before may be try to make it tillable and redo you color image and redo spec and normal map!
that should give u some good maps to render nicely in cycles
happy bl
I can see another thing
here you color map is almost square but your beam is not
can you make you map so that it fit the proportion of your beam
or there will be strong distortion in X or Y
happy bl
I did a comparison test for you color image and one of mine with same nodes set up
and you color image is not working
I can give you a good image if you need to
or get a real one from cg texture
happy bl
Attachments
you have one of the best soft to make normal map
so u shuold be able to get a very nice one
I re done one with NJOB which is not very good at nor map
and I beginning to get some nor render see beam here
but quality is very low here
I mean the vertical line looks bad
the image proportion is not rectangular but squarish
happy bl
from your post 9 do u have a high res of this model ?
you might be able to extract the texture from that pic and use this as a color image
then it would looks exactly like the image reference!
happy bl
I cut a portion of you reference image and did a low poly color and nor map and here what it gives
it is giving a good nor map of low quality
but you can still see the bumps very well
if you can make a higher res pic you should get a much better quality
happy l
redone a new normal map using Gimp plug in
and that can do some serious map !
see top image for Nor Gimp
happy bl
I’m back again:
I tried modifying and composing 2-3 textures on top of each other, giving them their own material settings each, and I ended up with this one:
The wood is supposed to look extremely old and worn, due to weather, eventually fire some years ago and so on.
But this one… looks too fake.
Why?
Though I am still not satisfied.
I can’t really point at what is wrong with this. But it still looks fake.
What am I missing in my attempt to create photorealism?
Wait, the last picture of yours is actually an actual render ?
:eek: