Making Shadow Map

[TazmaVawreak]

is there is any way turn a ambient occlusion map into a shadowmap or displacement map 

I am working with some of GUTTO full prim dress none of them have shadow map is got to be a way to make this 

Just a beginner. most of time i dont what i am doing but will like some help 

[Quarrel Kukulcan]

22 hours ago, TazmaVawreak said:

is there is any way turn a ambient occlusion map into a shadowmap or displacement map

Are you talking about SL's PBR materials or the classic system?

In PBR, the ambient occlusion data is the red channel of the combined AO/Roughness/Metallic image. You can make this into a grayscale shadow map with any image editor that can separate one color from a color image into its own grayscale image. SL has no way to use a standalone shadow map, though -- you'll also have to merge it with the diffuse color texture yourself (in GIMP or Photoshop or whatever), using "multiply" as a layer blending mode instead of the standard way.

SL doesn't have displacement maps (which move mesh vertices), but I think you mean "bump map". SL doesn't use bump maps but it does use normal maps, and you can convert the first into the second with some editing software or online. Big technical note: SL's normal maps use what's called "+X/+Y swizzle" (same as Blender, Maya and Unity; different from 3dsMax, Source and Unreal which use +X/-Y). The normal map should look like it's lit with aqua light from the top and purple light from the right, and you'll need to use the red and green channel settings in your conversion tool that accomplish this. If you get the polarity wrong, the bumps will cast shadows in unrealistic directions in SL.

(If you already have a normal map, you're in a bit of a spot. I don't know of a way to combine two normal maps easily.)

[Frionil Fang]

38 minutes ago, Quarrel Kukulcan said:

(If you already have a normal map, you're in a bit of a spot. I don't know of a way to combine two normal maps easily.)

For many purposes the basic overlay blend mode in most image editors is actually "good enough" for blending together normal maps -- not for every situation, but like if you wanted to apply grooves on top of an existing normal map. You *should* normalize the normal map afterwards since the overlay blend won't account for things going outside normal vector range but but SL doesn't care that much in practice.