Creating Bump Map for Ship Hulls

Hello, Just wondering if a few of you have some ideas on how you would go about creating a bump map to represent the dents between the frames and stringers on a ship hull. I found a pretty well weathered Knox class frigate that presents what I’m looking for here.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:US_Navy_090423-N-2821G-389_The_Mexican_navy_Knox-class_frigate_ARM_Mina_%28F-214%29_sails_in_formation_with_maritime_forces_from_Argentina,_Brazil,_Canada,_Chile,_Colombia,_Ecuador,_Germany,_Mexico,_Peru,_U.S._and_Uruguay_off_the.jpg

Any ideas are appreciated.

Thanks in advance!

Some of Photoshop’s / Gimp’s stock filters create a faceted / crystal-like effect.
Many bitmap filters cannot operate on a blank image; you could add some noise first.

From there you just need to add some areas representing bulkheads that would be unaffected.

Usually, while making textures, I usually create them at least four times as large as I need. While there are limits to texture sizes, given software and video cards. I would make them at least 1024 minimal, so 4096 would be a good size to make it, if you don’t want to remake it soon.

Alternatively, you could create a dented surface in Rhino 3D that represents the surface you want, from say, triangle planes. Then you could render it to a heightmap.
http://docs.mcneel.com/rhino/5/help/en-us/commands/showzbuffer.htm

I’ve used a noise texture in Flamingo(it’s been ages so the precise procedure escapes me)to make that very kind of effect, though not with the frames and stringers…but if you could combine a tile grid sort of texture where the ‘seams’ are flat and the tiles are rough, that might be a start.

In the world of video games they would brute-force 3D model the bumpiness–which to a certain extent is not an unreasonable option here–then render the surface out as a “normal map,” which is a much more sophisticated sort of bump map, which is then applied to a simpler surface.

From reading both of your replies, it seem consensus to create a model panel with the indents then render it as a normal or height map. I’ll start there, I like the idea when considering that all I need to do is make multiple copies to create a variety of random textures.

Thanks for the insight!

After reading about the ShowZBuffer command I created a grid work of stringers and frames properly spaced then I filled the spaces with surfaces with a much higher control point count and pulled the dents into them and joined all surfaces. I then did a top down render preview and used the ShowZBuffer command, took a screen capture and rendered it as a normal map. The final outcome is a spectacular hull dent affect. I’m not saying my work is spectacular here, I’m saying that you don’t need to leave Rhino to completely create this… Bravo McNeel Team!

Thank you Brenda and Jim…

I’ve had success in this aspect by making a fine-mesh FEA model of a plate panel with a pressure load, setting the output results to contour, and displaying the contour in greyscale. The resulting PNG’s are included. I think it would be wise to both use it as a bump and specular map, to make the model shiny in the correct location. You can get a real good starved horse effect by controlling the parameters in the shader. Used these to make the following render:

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Stunning render! Thanks for sharing the maps, can’t wait to give it a try.

I use bulge procedural texture from vray
http://www.turbosquid.com/3d-models/3d-model-usns-montford-point-core/824552