Bumpyness & Giving It a Smooth and Natural Look

Step 5.2: Putting In Some Bump Maps
Now that we have some textures up, the final thing for getting the bonus is to put up some bump maps!

First... let us talk about the bump mapping techniques. What is bump mapping? It allows us to use lighting to create the details for the object. For example, bump mapping allows us to make a polygon looks like it has a lot of details, even though we only have one flat polygon down there. This is possible as the computer can use the bump map to cast different amount of lighting to different areas of the polygon. This gives the illusion that the thing is "bumpy" and detailed. The picture below shows bump mapping.

(click picture to see the enlarged version)

So how does it work? It is actually using another image to determine how much light to cast onto different areas of the surface. In the example above, the image below was used for the bump map texture.

Basically, the bump map uses different shades of gray to determine the "height" of the area. Completely white is the highest point in the bump map. The more dark the area is, the more "pushed in" it is. So if it is completely black, it is the deepest that the area can be "pushed in".

With the original texture as the base, I modified them to make my bump map for the clock and the sub-components, using the concept described above. Here is some result of creating the bump maps.

(click pictures to see the enlarged version)

Thus, there was not a need for me to do Boolean Difference to create the triangle for the battery cover, nor do Boolean Union to create the details for the slider. Saves polygons and also allows me to create and modify details easily instead of manipulating polygons!

Step 6: Smoothing the Object
The final step was to smooth the object. Right now, the clock model has sharp edges, which doesn't look very nice and is certainly not what our real-world object looks like. The sharpness looks too unnatural and therefore we have to find a way to smooth it.

There were two ways of solving this approach, however, picking either one of them has its own advantages and disadvantages. The picture below explains the scenario that I faced:

(click picture to see the enlarged version)

Eventually, I decided to have it "really" smoothed, because you can only see the bump maps in render mode and not when you draw the model, so I had to make sure that the object is smooth in render mode too. Thus I went ahead and press Mesh > Smooth.

However, this means that the clock now has 6112 polygons. But, I don't think it will matter since I am not using in a real game development project or anything, so this will do for now.

So this is the final product of all the work that I have done. The model for Assignment 1: complete!

(click pictures to see the enlarged version)