Question about the trick with the "image/texture to normal" for the headphones

This may be a very general, basic noob question but when I look at the texture which is used to achieve the effect of wrinkels on the headphone pads it would NEVER come into my mind that this texture would actually result in this visual wrinkels on the pad when I just rotate the texture by 90° and adjust strength and distance in the bump node. For me one of the biggest challenges is to achieve in my shaders what I see in reality / in my references. In this tutorial you do it the other way around: you describe what happens when we use this texture and tweak some settings. Basically my question is: is it just a question of experience or are there some basic "receipts" out there for example "When you want to get some wrinkels on a round object like the headphone pads use an image like XY and then tweak the shader settings like ABC"?!

And another question: why are the wrinkles actually placed as if they go into around? They are placed circular but when I understand correctly how textures work I would expect them to be showing all into one direction. What do I misunderstand here?

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  • Omar Domenech replied
    No there is no recipe, it is a matter of experience yes. It's not always a straight forward answer, it will depend on so many things and the situation that it will not be a matter of following something by the book. You just need to study and understand object coordinates, vectors, which node uses which system and as you understand all of that, you adapt the uses to suit your needs. Procedural shading is very powerful and it can be complex, exactly because you have to have an understanding on what's under the hood for the software. And it's not always intuitive, you can get some many patters from a noise texture to make so many world like surfaces and it's all about small tweak in the settings, it's a very creative endeavor. The headphones is just one example, there is no right or unique approach, JL just found its way around to use it the way he wanted things.
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  • RedRay Visuals replied

    hmm... I think the answer does not really fit. I did not ask for procedural shading (I think)... I asked related to the image / bump map used in this specific way as - when I look at the map - I would never get the idea that this map could be used for the purpose it is used here in this lecture.

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  • Omar Domenech replied

    Yeah you can cheat, we cheat all the time, using a concrete texture to simulate rubber or rubber to make it look like wood. What I am saying is there is no straight from A to B in this, it's mostly imagination.

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