Cavity map, seperating concave and convex details

ianucci

Hey everyone, I've been wracking my brains about how to separate the concave and convex (dark and light) areas of a cavity map in Photoshop. Im talking about a map such as you get from the 'normal to cavity' filter in xNormal with dark and light areas on a grey base colour.

passerby

level it to get more contrast than use it on 2 differnt layers one with multiply for the dark parts and one on the screen blending mode for the brighter areas.

r_fletch_r

Its worth baking out a Curvature map in xnormal. that that way you can use the green and red channel as masks. Its easier and more accurate.

tristamus

r_fletch_r wrote: »

Its worth baking out a Curvature map in xnormal. that that way you can use the green and red channel as masks. Its easier and more accurate.

Ya....was gonna say, xNormal has curvature / convexity / cavity map baking abilities. Use'em!

dtschultz

r_fletch_r wrote: »

Its worth baking out a Curvature map in xnormal. that that way you can use the green and red channel as masks. Its easier and more accurate.

Interesting. So, you can use the curvature map to mask out your cavity mask? I'll have to try that.

r_fletch_r

dtschultz wrote: »

Interesting. So, you can use the curvature map to mask out your cavity mask? I'll have to try that.

If you bake a curvature map in XN it shades the Concave areas in red and the convex areas in green.

You can copy and paste the green and red channels into their own layers and you get a cavity and convexity mask.

dtschultz

Thanks! I will give that a shot.

Edit: Wow! That works so well. Thanks a ton man.

ianucci

Thanks guys. I had avoided curvature rendering in xNormal because I had no luck with it in the past, then I realised I hadn't got the latest update which works brilliantly.