“Bump to Glossiness Map” is missing from the V-Ray 6.2 new features list.
Is Bump to Glossiness Map only accessible from “TexBump2Glossiness” of VRayPluginNodeTex?
Well, that’s enough.
In 3ds Max, yes.
eheh, crafty! 
Hmmm…it’s been pretty well covered in V-Ray Maya, but quiet in max. 
We haven’t gotten to developing it for Max yet.
The pluginNodeTex in fact lacks one key port, and doesn’t seem to work.
It seems like a low priority for porting. max users don’t request it?
At any rate, we look forward to an official port in the future.
Yep, we got no requests for it yet.
It is planned, however, and we are being read by the right people. 
After seeing the Maya version +1 for it please 
I’ve a question just a little bit off-topic compared to the original post.
What’s the actual reason for this? I mean, why a “bump map” should be in the real life become a glossiness attenuator?
Because the lower part of a bump is less exposed to physical wear and due to this is less glossy?
this map will help fixing the issue of changing glossiness when you view the object from far distance due to the bump map filtering /mipmapping , check this video for more info :
There was a huge discussion about this issue here and corona 11 just fixed yesterday : )) :
Here is some interesting data… This also applies to the discussion about how much Blur to apply to textures. Because it is very different between The Max Bitmap Node and the VRayBitmap node. I mean VERY different…
Max Bitmap Blur blurs the texture in world space, blurring more based on the distance from the camera:
Blur 0.01 Blur Offset 0 Max Bitmap (Above)
Blur 10 Blur Offset 0 Max Bitmap Pyramid Filtering (Above)
Blur 10 Blur Offset 0 Max Bitmap Summed Area Filtering (Above)
Max Bitmap Blur 0.01 Blur Offset 0.2 Pyramid (Above) Note blur offset blurs the texture in 2d space before applying it. So it is soft close to camera as well.
VRayBitmap Blur 50 Blur Offset 0 Sharp Isootropic (Above). Note first that a blur of 50 is required to get close to Max blur of 10. Note this also appears to blur in 2d space ??? Or raster (screen) space ???
VRayBitmap Blur 10 Blur Offset 0 Isotropic (Above). This old Isotropic (not Sharp Isotopic) appears closest to Max’s bitmap behavior.
VRayBitmap Blur 0.01 Blur Offset 0.2 Isotropic (Above). This old Isotropic (not Sharp Isotopic) still appears closest to Max’s bitmap behavior. Blur offset blurring in 2d space.
VRayBitmap Blur 5.0 Blur Offset 0.0 Elliptical (Above). I think this is likely the best bet overall (with less blur of course). Note I had to reduce the blur amount.
So there are a number of different samples. That texture is a grid image (not the checker procedural).
Some observations.
- The Max bitmap and the VRay on the old Isotropic seem to blur more with distance (which causes some of what the Bump to Glossiness Map is supposed to solve, but also reduces distant crawlies in animation).
- Blur offset (like the Max docs say) blurs in 2d texture space (like pre-blurring in PS).
- Sharp Isotropic in VRayBitmap does not have much softening in the distance, which may be worse for animations, but is likely better for stills.
- To my eye Elliptical looks like the best balance, but it will require adjusting your shaders because the change is so different that the look could be altered. Best to set this when you create the VRayBitmap node so all tweaking is based on your chosen filtering method. Summed Area on Max Bitmap also looks nice.
- The different filtering methods require manual tweaking of the blur and blur offset amounts, and likely of other portions of the shader (esp glossiness).
- I hadn’t realized just how different Max Bitmap is from VRayBitmap.
- YMMV
Wowkay that explains a heap. Can this be implemented pretty please.
It is annoying that the blurs don’t match in strength between the various filter techniques, as it makes it difficult to test different techniques without simply noticing that the other filter “messed it up” because the blur is so different that something got too soft or too sharp and ruined the shader.
I know I did get artifacts with elliptical one time, but I think I reported that and it was fixed. This was right after they added it. Still thinking I will make all new shaders with Elliptical on as the starting point.
Yes, please add my vote for this as well. So if I understand correctly, the workaround, until a better approach is implemented, is to lower the bump map texture Blur amount to 0.1-0.01?
Let me complement your findings with what i know of the two bitmap loaders.
a) Blur :
This is slightly misnomered, in that what it really does is step through the mip levels.
At its default of 1.0 it uses whatever it deems right for that view, the higher the distance, the lower the mip.
At 0.01 it will use the highest-resolution mip for all calculations which will be sharp, but much slower, and possibly more memory intensive.
It will surely be sharp, but it will very likely devastate convergence rates, meaning *much* more AA will be needed to have the bitmap properly sampled (much more so for temporal coherence!), as the mip-mapping for that texture has effectively been disabled.
Further, if using a vrayBitmap to load a tiled texture at the right mip level on demand, using the highest resolution could also have enormous RAM usage impacts (f.e. one loads a 32k px square terrain texture whole, instead of the right mip resolutions depending on distance.).
Going above 1.0 conversely lowers the resolution of the mip map used.
Which of course results in more or less blur, hence the parameter name.
You may be better able to see this with some custom mip-tester image, rather than a procedural.
This is the same for our bitmap loader, with the catches outlined below:
b) VrayBitmap Filtering Methods:
Isotropic can be assumed to work about the same as the Max default filter.
Sharp Isotropic simply chooses a higher resolution mip than plain Isotropic, resulting in sharper-looking details. (Most of the time. The selection heuristics are complex.)
It’s essentially the same as lowering blur, but crucially this filtering mode does it just enough, without overtaxing the sampler or the user’s RAM.
Elliptical filtering is going to be sharp at high glancing angles, but quite soft at facing ones, compared to the isotropic filtering.
It’s best used for stuff that’s near parallel to the view and goes far in the distance, like walls, roads, water planes, and so on.
c) Memory:
Summed Area for the max loaders is pretty, but very memory intensive. use with care.
The very best memory usage and overall sharpness can be had with .tx textures and the sharp isotropic filtering mode.
At most, blur could be lowered a tiny bit (how much depends on how many mip levels there are. go very slow and check.), but *never* should it be set at 0.01 lest nightmares happen.
Here’s a test.
Notice the Blur parameter maps 1:1 with the vrayBitmap “Filter Amt.”, and you only need to use one of either.
On what the bump2glossiness does:
It aims to solve the issue with bump maps filtering at a distance.
The further away one goes from a bumped surface, the less detail the map is able to provide, and the resulting surface glossiness gets higher with distance as a result.
The bump2glossiness computes an exact glossiness map and drives the shader appearance with that, instead of the hard-to-filter bump when the viewing distance increases, preserving the shader’s look regardless.
the docs’ exact quote:
VRayBump2Glossiness utility texture generates a reflection glossiness texture from a bump or a normal map.
Use of this texture avoids the effect of overly shiny or too highlighted glossy parts of objects seen at a distance.
With a reflection glossiness texture generated from bump/normal map, proper reflection glossiness is achieved at any distance, while detail is preserved.