> What's wrong with using material_map?

Well there's nothing particularly wrong with it, it's just not a very
versatile or intuitive thing to use, especially when, for example, the bits
where you want less specularity on a surface don't match up to the bits
where you want less diffuse or reflection or whatever.  With diffuse,
specular, reflection, transparency in both filter and transmit channels, on
top of image and bump maps - even with only one layer of each you're
looking at a lot of possible combinations to try to match up in Photoshop.

In fact POVs procedural and layered textures are indeed sufficiently
powerful to achieve good results, particularly on objects with a single
material, but something I've recently realised is that if you're using UV
mapping on mesh objects the ability to layer textures positionally comes
into its own as a much more sophisticated technique.  Another example of
this kind of thing is if you have a UV mapped mesh and you want to create
dark grimy smudges in the cracks and crevices.  Using POV alone this could
be difficult to achieve whereas using the image layers method we're
discussing it becomes a trivial case of painting a UV image with a dark
colour along the UV edges corresponding to the recessed areas of your
model, then mapping the image to the diffuse channel.  That way the texture
of the object is not changed, but it picks up less light in carefully
controlled areas.

There is no doubt that using this technique is difficult, and I'm by no
means an expert, but i understand it enough to see its sophistication in
simplicity.

And regarding the attitude problem - as a recently joined member of this
newsgroup (though not a new user of POV) I was disappointed to see the kind
of treatment that a new member receives.  However, having been a long time
member of other internet forums I am perfectly well aware that these things
always seem bigger than they are, and that none of it really matters; so,
apology accepted, though I'd urge you to be more careful in future - at
least if you're going to get feisty, make sure you're locked on the right
target.

L
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