Exterior Wall Details

[3darchitect]

Ok, so I require the vast knowledge of the all thee who dwell in the land of 3D....b/c I still am floundering through a multitude of meshes that threaten to consume me....Ok I'm done now.

 

But I do need some help lol. I'm working on an exterior rendering of a building that has some semi-detailed banding that runs around a few areas. (Fyi, I'm not very good with 3ds right now - completely self taught - and very little time at it). I've attached a pic of the autocad elevation. I'm just wondering how I'd go about mapping the banding. I could do just one map, but the banding stops/changes at each intersection with a window and corner. There is also a sill at near the floor height of the wall, that I'm not sure how I'll model that.

 

My main concern is the banding...any ideas?

 

Thanks!

[denham]

Make the horizontal & vertical soldier coursing different geometries & apply the same soldier course material to them, but on the horizontal rotate the UVW map 90 degrees.

[3darchitect]

ok, well, in essence, that is kinda what I was trying to avoid. There are tons of horizontal and vertical soldier coursing switches on the building - one at each intersection with a window, and a corner - and I was trying to see if I could find a way to map the whole thing without creating excess geometry - my initial reaction to that suggestion would be a lot of actually creating the model, and then a lot added on to the rendering time b/c if the added geometry. Am I wrong?

[Mechadus]

Ive had a lot of projects that have these 'score lines' in them - the tilt-up construction the developers in this area are using always seems to have that, so Ive been stuck having to model it pretty often. Heres how I do it (be warned - this is a NOT FUN process....

 

-I model my walls without any of the lines.. making sure they are perfect

-Then I add a SECOND edit poly modifier (ill explain why in a bit)

-Using the slice plane I cut my mesh wherever the lines go (this often creats many unnecessary lines, but dont worry about that

-After all the cuts are made, I switch over to 'edge' sub-object level (often MAX will auto-select all the newly created edges) and select, one wall at a time, all the edges that need to be recessed

-Then, with all the needed edges selected, I use the extrude option in edit poly, and enter -1" for the extrusion, and 1" for the extrusion base width.. This will give you 'V' shaped recesses in the geometry

-With the same edges still selected, use the chamfer tool, and chamfer .5" to flatted out the bottom of the 'V' shaped recess

 

There very well may be a better way to get this effect, but this is how I do it... I really don like using bump maps to add these lines, just because it never really winds up looking all that great.

 

I made a little graphic to help explain... hope this helps you...

 

 

 

 

-Nick

[Mechadus]

-I model my walls without any of the lines.. making sure they are perfect

-Then I add a SECOND edit poly modifier (ill explain why in a bit)

 

I forgot to explain I always add the second edit poly, because if you need to modify the base mesh later on (adding windows or whatever) its WAY easier to just delete the 'score lines edit-poly' and re-make them than to try and edit that much geometry... trust me

 

-Nick

[3darchitect]

ok, I've heard of that method before, but it doesn't really make my situation that much better. Well, for one, I model in ADT then import as much modeled geometry as I can into 3ds for rendering. Also, since my coursing changes from horizontal to vertical at every intersection, extruding cuts doesn't give me any more control over that. And infact, this coursing is flush with the wall so I don't need a recess or anything.