Step by step

Use Reflection maps to create pudles

01 Diffuse and Displace ment maps

You need to start with a clean ‘ face-on’ image. You could create your own by rendering a ‘tile’ material mixed with a couple of noise layers. Open in Photoshop and cut it down to make a tileable image. This will be your Diffuse map. Make a copy, desaturate, add a Levels adjustment and under the histogram, slide the outside pointers towards each other until you are left with only black lines between the tiles. This is your Displacement map.

02 Reflection maps 1

Make three copies of the Diffuse map. Desaturate and invert them all. Start with the bottom layer. Equalise the grey shades with Levels so that the intensity of the greys and whites are fairly equal. From the Filter Gallery select Palette Knife, set stroke size high and detail low. For the next layer, equalise the level intensity less, resulting in larger gaps after applying the Palette Knife. Increase the brightness of these gaps with Levels and add Gaussian Blur. For the top layer use Levels to make the white lines bright and the tiles dark.

03 Reflection maps 2

For the top two layers change the blend mode to Lighten. Create a new layer over the top of the three layers. Paint white blobs over the tiles and then use Gaussian Blur and the Blur tool to soften the edges. Save out the image as reflection1.

Make an additional copy of this ‘blobs’ layer and add another Gaussian Blur filter to it, but this time with a higher setting so that the whiteness expands further out. Add a Levels adjustment layer and raise the brightness of the image. Save this out as reflection2.

04 Set up in 3ds max

In Max, create a ground plane and add a V-ray material. Put your Diffuse map into the Diffuse slot. Add a Falloff material to the Reflect slot and put your reflection1 map in the top slot and reflection2 map in the bottom slot. Instance copy this into the Rglossiness slot. A copy of the reflection2 map with a reduced brightness intensity was created. Add this into the Bump slot with a setting of around 5. Add a Vraydisplacement modifier to your ground plane and attach your Displacement map with a setting of 5mm.