cpeterson4@mail.csuchico.edu
The main use of bump maps in any scene is to give the object a more realistic look. A bump map is a grayscale (black, white, and greys) picture that Lightwave reads as an elevation map. It takes the pixels which are darker and creates an indention into ur object. The lighter the pixels are, the higher elevation the indentions of the object will be. The color black is the deepest a bump map will indent. White on the other hand is the highest. In this tutorial I will show you how to create bump maps and apply them to your objects in Lightwave.
What you need:
1. Lightwave
2. A Paint Program (I use Adobe Photoshop in this tutorial.)
3. Possibly a scanner (not required although useful).
***Please note that these methods are in most paint programs, however they might have different names or function keys***
Step
1:
Open up Lightwave Modeler.Select the objects surface polygons and assign
them to a texture (Default is the "q"
button). At this point name the texture of the object. I will call mine
"orangepeel". Save your work and close Lightwave.
Step
2:
Open up your paint program (Photoshop) and create a new image. For my
orange texture I will make mine a 660 x 660 pixel document. I mainly choose
a big size so when you apply the texture to the model later on it has
more clarity and is less distorted.
Now create your texture using any tool you like. Then save it as "yourmodelname_texture.bmp" (or any other file format Lightwave will support). Here is what I created (its a thumbnail to reduce loading time. Click on it to see the full size texture.):
For this next section I used a scanner to get the exact skin type of an orange peel. You do not need to scan in order for a good effect, but I wanted mine to look as close to an orange as I could. So here is my scan:
Now select a portion of the orange that has a minimal amount of light hitting it so that your bump will not become too light. Then copy it (Default: "CTRL + C"). Here I showed the section of what part of the orange I used.
Step
6:
Now create a new document
with same size dimensions as last time (i.e. 660 x 660). Make
sure you make the background transparent. Then paste the
portion of the orange that you just copied (Default: "CTRL
+ V"). I shrunk the size so you can see what mine
looked like.
Now what you are going to want to do is take the magic wand tool and click on any part of the transparent region around your image.
Step
8:
Now goto the Select > Inverse
to select the inverse (it inverts the selection on the image). Then goto
the Select > Feather
and insert a value of 5.
..........
Then......... 
Now you want to goto the Select > Inverse to revert your selection. The press the Delete key two times and this will give your image a blurred edge around it.
Now using the crop tool, leave a little bit (2 pixel) border around your now feathered image.
Now we will select the whole area by pressing "CTRL + A". After it is selected, go to Edit > Define Pattern.
Now create a new document (same dimensions as before 660x660). Use the color picker and paint bucket tool to fill the background of the image with a color that is close to your texture color.
...... Then you should get something like this (but bigger)
. 
Now choose the paint bucket tool (used in previous step to fill the color) up towards the menus there is a tool bar with a few options on it. Select pattern and choose the pattern we created earlier. Then click on the layer.
Then
You should see something that looks like this now:
Now create a new layer and fill the new layer with the exact same pattern. After you do that use the move tool and slightly offset it so it blends in with your previous layer. (Make sure your Layer window is open by going to Window > Layers). If you look closely you can see the different layers are shifted to cover the gaps. Example:
New Layer:
.......
Then .......
Move Layers Around:
....
.Then .... 
Repeat step 14 until all of the area is covered with your texture so your background is no longer visible. Example of completely covered:
