ZBMP Depth Map?

[Lemurboy]

I'm trying to make my own scenes with depth maps, but I have no idea how it works. I've been looking through old threads and they have links to tools, but of course, the link is dead. How do I make depth maps?

[Lord Blazer]

Step one is understanding what a depth map/ z buffer is. It's not really terribly easy to make your own depth map; I would recommend just use the standard 3dmm scene making techniques.

[Evil Ash]

You would need Photoshop, and to be done properly, a 3D modelling program.

You can model the 2D scene in basic 3D, and then render out a Z-buffer that way.

Or, in Photoshop, simply create a series of gradients (from white to black, but keeping in mind black is INFINITY so usually stay in the light grey range - look at other Z-buffers for examples)

Generally you'd mask out certain pieces of the world, and create a gradient for depth. Then solid paint objects at a certain depth with a certain shade, and etc. etc.

This is a basic rundown, just so you know what you're getting into.

And then use pencil to import your BMP for an assigned ZBMP for your scene.

[Crackedeggs]

I know the last post was 10 years ago, but adding to what was previously said, since I've just been making custom scenes with depth maps the past few days.

When using photographs as scenes, you basically have to make the depth map by hand. For the past 3 outdoor scenes, I've found the following to be helpful:

- make sure the scene doesn't have much visible floor or other continuous surfaces extending for large depths (or you'll notice the lack of gradient)
- Mask out the sky with 100% white

For the rest, you'll be slicing the scene into 12+ depths. Basically to make it look like cut-paper or a puppetshow scene. Plan where you want to slice. To make this easy on yourself, you'll be working in the Lab colorspace.

For the closest object to the camera, use a gray color with Lab Lightness value of 45. Cover the objects at that depth with the color.

For each slice, create a new layer behind the previous, and use a gray color increasing the Lightness +1 each time.

When you're done masking everything, you need to apply a Brightness/Contrast filter to everything except the sky. You want to reduce the Contrast -50%. At least twice. The ideal is to get your final Lab values after adjusting contrast (except the sky) to be between 49 (closest slice) and 52 (farthest slice).

Anything higher than 52 will feel like infinity if you're moving things to the distance (it's possible the value even clips not much higher). Anything lower than 49 and your characters will feel like giants in the scene and you'll have to shrink them. It may take some trial and error, testing the scene until you pinch the contrast enough to get an acceptable result.

If you use this method and there is a continuous surface, the slices will seem too unnatural if your character crosses a slice boundary. For these scenes, after following the instructions above and getting a usable result, it may be worthwhile to attempt masking gradients onto those faces, with the gradient start/end at the relevant slice boundaries. I haven't tried this but it should work.

[PizzaLuigi]

Just make hand made scenery at this point ffs.

[Crackedeggs]

While handmade scenery using 3D words and other props works for some projects/scenes, sometimes you want that photographic look. While nowadays you can certainly build a photorealistic scene in Unreal or Blender for use in 3DMM, sometimes the time investment is still less to take a photograph you already have and slice it up into grays, no matter how annoying the process is. It all depends on the look you're going for, and how much time you have.

And unfortunately, your suggestion to use handmade scenery, while I'm sure it was well-intentioned, did not address the OP's question about how to make a ZBMP, which I assumed would be used in 7gen's background2vxp as I had done.

As a followup to my previous post, when making custom depth maps by hand, I recommend avoiding using gradient functions like the one in Photoshop. When the hex values are this close together, Photoshop does a strange dithering in order to give the appearance of more shades in between. But if you use the gradient as your depth map for background2vxp, you'll find the dither creates an effect of object slices being in multiple random depths at once which makes it hard to place actors and props in some locations. So stick to slices for photographs or try to create the photograph in a modeling program.

[Kane]

.

[Plopilpy]

I think you can render them in blender with a fog map.

[Needy]

depth

[Lt Films]

Originally Posted by Needy

depth

I'm just curious, what was your reasoning to bump a thread that hasn't been bumped in 3 years just to say "depth"?

[Plopilpy]

Originally Posted by Lt Films

I'm just curious, what was your reasoning to bump a thread that hasn't been bumped in 3 years just to say "depth"?

[VGCharacters]

Originally Posted by Lt Films

I'm just curious, what was your reasoning to bump a thread that hasn't been bumped in 3 years just to say "depth"?

pot calling the kettle black, much?