To complete this tutorial you’ll need to download and install a free plug-in called Greeble (its size is just 25.4KB). Plug-in can be found here (http://max.klanky.com/Greeble7.zip). After installing it, it’ll appear in the modifier list.

Create a plane that has the same length and width and number of length and width segs should be bigger then 1. I used the following settings:

Now, add the Greeble modifier to the newly created plane. Change the settings to get the result you are satisfied with.

Add the UW Map modifier. Leave the mapping type to planar. Change the Alignment axis to Y and click on the Fit button just underneath.  

After applying these modifiers, your modifier stack should look like this.

Add a default Standard material to the plane (of course you can add a material that has a texture of a metal in its diffuse slot, but then you need to change the mapping type in UW Map modifier to Box; just remember to return it to planar before rendering a bump map).

When generating a diffuse map like this one it’s a good thing to have some soft shadows in it because it adds contrasts and highlights the fine details in the texture. Besides that, it adds to realism. To do this, add a Skylight to the scene. Now go to Rendering -> Advanced Lighting -> Light Tracer. Change the Rays/Sample value to 100 (this will speed up the rendering times while keeping a good render quality; if you want a better quality just crank up the value).

Select the plane. Scroll the buttons to the right until the end. Click on the drop down menu that says View and change it to Box Selected.

Next, click on the little teapot button the right side of the drop down menu. Enter the image dimension you want and click Render.

Final render should look similar to this (this is a 256x256 render):

Well that’s it for the diffuse map. Now, we move to the bump map. Open the material editor, and select the first empty material slot. Click on the Diffuse map slot and choose the Gradient map. Set the Map #1 color to white, Map #2 to gray and Map #3 to black. Copy the Gradient map from the Diffuse slot to the Self-Illumination slot. Assign the material to the plane.

Now, render a bump map the same way we did it with the diffuse map. Result can be seen in the next picture.

This technique can be used generate all sorts of textures, animated or static. Just model the geometry for the texture, texture it if necessary, add a skylight + light tracer and render it.

Example of an animated texture:

Create 2 planes in the top view port and name the first Black and second White. Make sure that they have the same length and width. Next, position them like shown on the picture bellow.

Go into the material editor. Select an empty material slot and name it White. Change its diffuse color to white (R: 255 G: 255 B: 255) and self-illumination to 100. Next, select another empty material slot and rename it to Black. Set the diffuse color to Black (R: 0 G: 0 B: 0).

Apply the White material to the White plane and the Black material to the Black Plane.

Now go to the Time Configuration settings. Set the Frame Rate to Film and End Time to 120.

Click on the Auto Key button and move the Time Slider to the end (frame 120).

Move the White plane right over the Black plane.

Click on the Auto Key button to turn it off.

Select the Black plane and render the animation the same way I explained earlier. Of course because we are going to render the animation this time we need to go to Rendering -> Render dialogue and change 2 settings. Time Output needs to be set to Active Time Segment: 0 To 120 and Render Output needs to be an animation file (avi, mov or something similar).