Displacement textures enable us to create “real bumps.” That is, create actual geometry instead of merely the illusion of geometry.
In this tutorial we will create a cloth backdrop combining a Displacement Texture with a silk texture on top.
Let us start drawing a right angle with a curved corner with the pen tool.
The starting path – a right angle with a curved corner.
We then extrude this path.
The extruded path
In order to apply the Displacement Texture, we will convert this extrude into a Bezier surface.
Conversion into a Bezier Surface
Now it is time to create the Displacement texture.
To create a new Displacement Texture click and hold on the New… button in the Resource palette, Textures tab, then select Displacement in the menu that appears.
This will be the displacement map:
Displacement Map
And this is the Displacement Texture.
The sampling can be adjusted to strike the perfect balance between detail and render time.
This map can be tiled horizontally, not vertically using the Offset filter in Photoshop. It is not necessary to tile it vertically.
The texture is applied using planar mapping, with the map in a 45º angle, as seen in the image below:
The Displacement map is applied at an angle.
As you can see in the image above, there is no need to repeat the cloth texture in the vertical axis, but we will repeat it in the horizontal axis.
After inserting a camera and adjusting the view, our cloth backdrop looks like this.
The silk is a new Image texture with high anisotropy and tinted specular highlights.
The silk texture. Click for full-size image.
This texture goes on top of the Displacement texture in the Texture & FX tab of the Object Properties palette.
The silk backdrop
Now it is a matter of adding objects and lights.
The backdrop in action.
Hope this tutorial is of use to you. Here is the project file for your perusal.
