EnigmA Amiga Run 1995 November/EnigmA AMIGA RUN 02 (1995)(G.R. Edizioni)(IT)[!][issue 1995-11][Skylink CD].iso/earcd/docs/lwml9505.lha/LWML9505.TXT/[e-mail]_Sat May 20 12:22:08 1995.msg

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From: [e-mail] (James Hastings-Trew)
Subject: Re: Decals
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>        Ya know, I've always heard about Imagine's wonderfullness in this
>        regard, but never really understood, since I bailed at the
>        Turbo Silver+ stage.
>
>        What does it mean to have more than one texture on a surface?  re
>        the above, it's not color OR bump OR etc, we can of course (and I
>        know you know this already, David) color AND bump AND luminance,
>        so I'm still not grokking how it differs from Imagine's scheme.

In Imagine, you can have as many textures as you want on a given surface.
For example I could create a surface with a "brush" (bitmap texture), and
then layer on top of that several procedural textures to modify or dirty up
the original brushmap. For example, you could have a tiled brushmap of
alien skin, and then layer on top of that some discolourations with a
procedural texture (or another brushmap!) and then have some procedural
veins on top of that, and then perhaps some plasma effects on top of that.

Imagine does not have "colour maps" or "transparency maps" or "bump maps"
-- it only has textures, which can do all of these things and more.
Textures are applied in order. So, for example, the object is given a base
colour, and then texture 1 can either modify or replace that colour, and
then texture 2 modifies or replaces the colour that texture 1 came up with,
and then texture 3 modifies or replaces what texture 2 came up with, and so
on. Since ultimately all texture effects in any 3D program is just the
process of deciding what colour a particular pixel is going to be, this
amounts to a very flexible and powerful system.

In Lightwave, by contrast, each surface can only have one each of: Colour,
Diffuse, Luminous, Transparency, or Bump. If you need a complexly coloured
surface, then you have to create that surface yourself before you apply it.
In other words, for the example above, you'd have to create the alien skin,
and then apply discolourations, and then apply veins, and then apply the
plasma effects, all on your own in a paint program, to create an image to
apply to the surface. This eliminates the possibility of using a procedural
texture to work with the 3D volume of your object, and therefore restricts
the realism of your final rendered piece.


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