Corrugation assistance

[missingblink]

Hi there.

 

I'm not quite a beginner in Max & VRay, but close. I some Architectural Visualisation about two years ago, and I'm just now revisiting it as someone has passed a project my way.

 

I'm not quite sure if this is a geometry issue or a rendering issue so I put it in the main 3D Max forum.

 

Basically as you will be able to see from the images below, I'm getting some triangulation happening in my displaced corrugated material. What I've done is created a plane and edited the points to create openings. For the material, I've put a gradient in the displace slot which is mirrored and repeated. The plane also has a UVW modifier on it set to plane.

What I'm aiming for is something that looks like corrugated zinc, but doesn't take up a whole lot of space with excess geometry - something efficient. I was thinking another way to do this would be with a modifier of some sort, but which one and wouldn't that also involve geometry again?

 

I do want this to be a high quality image, so I'm not going to use a flat bitmap in the diffuse slot. I guess I just don't have enough experience to determine what is going wrong here, and furthermore what the best route to follow will be.

 

If someone could give me a little help here, that would be great!

 

A render of the problem

 

The mesh

 

The UVW map

 

The gradient

[Nic H]

Looks like your vertices arent planar? Double check, im sure thats the prob

[missingblink]

Hmm... How would I check that? Which vertices are you referring to?

[Horhe]

Looks like your vertices arent planar? Double check, im sure thats the prob

 

Yes in my opinion thats the case probably.

 

Hmm im wondering why did you tile a noise map 130 times? And you have set the Noise amount to 0. Is it your way of making a stripe material? Wouldnt it be easier to use the checker or tiles materials instead?

[missingblink]

This is the type of material I'm aiming for.

 

I'm not using any noise map... I have a gradient map in the displacement slot. I tiled the gradient 130 times to hopefully get a corrugation effect... Probably not the best way to do it though.

[Horhe]

Oops, sorry. Well its 5:30 am here so im excused for misinterpering a gradient map for a noise map

 

I think i might know what the problem is. It may well be with the displacement. Instead of tiling the material in the material editor, you should tile it using the Uv mapping under the modifier tab. It should be applied before the displacement modifier.

 

I use displacement only to create surfaces that are heavy on mesh and take a lot of time to create (grass, rocks, pavement displacement, wall displacement etc.). What i would do here is clone a couple of lines to create a sort of "edgy" and "toothy" effect, then i would fillet the verticies.

You could also use the arc tool, mirror the curve as a copy and then duplicate the two as many times as you need.

[Horhe]

...give it outline, extrude it and then boolean the holes.

[Horhe]

Another thing, when applying the Uv map in the modifier tab, set it to "box" mapping technique rather than planar...

[dinhtuan]

Can you upload this scene to check? BUt I think it's smoothing group problem. You can select elements in sub-object and clear smoothing group.

Hope that hepl!

[AFK_Matrix]

I dont create alot of corrugated material for my work so excuse me if this is a stupid suggestion. But if your looking to actually model that affect would it not be simpler to create a plane with some length & width segments, then apply a wave modifier and then turn this to an editable poly and cut the holes out? You will then get the smooth humps you see in that picture you linked.

 

Sorry if that is a stupid suggestion.

[missingblink]

Actually that's how I used to do it, but I seem to recall some patterning occuring in certain perspectives. I am about to try it again.

 

Otherwise, I've just decided to create panels of corrugated metal rather than play around with the displacement map. Every way I turn using the gradient, I get diamonds appearing in the render.

 

Here's a one method to create corrugated metal if anyone's interested.

http://www.tbmax.net/blog/_archives/2007/2/19/2748628.html#comments

[missingblink]

Can you upload this scene to check? BUt I think it's smoothing group problem. You can select elements in sub-object and clear smoothing group.

Hope that hepl!

 

Sorry I missed your post. I can't actually post the scene file. I have however done a mockup of the corrugated issue in the following file.

http://missingblink.net/images/screenshots/corrugatedproblem-scene.max

 

I'm not sure what you mean by the smoothing group problem, could you give me some more info on that?

[only3d]

not stupid but very costly.. polygon-wise of course.

i think the extruded spline offer will give u the best result.

if for some reason u have to have it as a material- the top and bottom of the map should be the same colour otherwise they wont match in creating a way pattern.