Random Tile Map?

[rmccoy]

I need some help.

 

I am modeling an office building that I need to have randomly placed and randomly rotated carpet tiles using a variety of textures.

 

here is an example of the product I am using. interfaceFLOR

 

I had previously used a plugin called texture shaker to do this in max 8. It is a great plugin btw. However, the developer has not released an updated version to work with max 9 or 2008.

 

I am trying to keep from using photoshop to create massive textures to have this effect.

 

Do you have any suggestions, tips, plugins that would allow me to achieve this?

 

I have started trying to learn a little c++ to develop my own material but I am lost when it comes to programming.

 

Thanks in advanced for your help.

 

Ross

[Dave Buchhofer]

I'm a big fan of quick and dirty.. and that leans me towards just making a few mesh tiles and using a bit of a script for it

 

or just a large segmented plane and some random material id's and a multi sub with a few differently rotated carpet bitmap types is probably the easiest. the joys of face mapping or physical scale

[rmccoy]

Thanks for the suggestions!

 

I was thinking about the using a mutli/sub material to do this. I really want this to be random so maybe I can just use a little max script to assign random material ids.

 

Thanks for the help!

[Tyorl]

1. Just model tiles, make them an elements of EPoly or EMesh, apply MaterialbyElement modifier, next create Multisub material and apply it to your tiles.

2. Make a mat with Gradient map as a diffuse map and Type:Mapped and as a map use Tiles, in Tiles gain Fade Variance. Think instead of colors u can use bitmaps.

3. Search for TileMagic, it is like default Tiles but u can set 8 independent maps, but only Stack Bond, but it won't be a problem if u Mix two maps.

[rmccoy]

Thank you for your suggestions.

 

I have tried the TileMagic plugin. it comes close to what I am looking for. some of the downfalls of using this plugin are that it does not use the whole map when creating the TileMagic texture.

 

an Example of this is...

I want a 50x50 rectangle to have 2x2 squares mapped to the surface.

I set the TileMagic texture to have U and V values to 25 each.

This creates the grid I am looking for.

However, The way that the plugin uses the texture is by stretching the individual maps over the entire surface.

If using a texture that is 500x500 pixels the whole object uses the 500x500 image dramatically reducing the quality. I think the map works by masking over the images to show only one image per "tile". The map would be great if it would use the whole 500x500 pixel image per "tile" that tilemagic creates.

 

Sorry about that reply. I'm just getting frustrated trying to figure this out.

 

I may have to do the individual modeling of tiles. I am trying to keep from doing this.

 

Another solution that is similar to what you are suggesting is to use a grid cutting plugin to slice my surface into the desired size and then randomly assign matIDs to the faces then use a multi/sub material.

 

If you have any other suggestions please let me know. if only TextureShaker would work for 9 or 2008 I would be set lol.

 

Thanks again for your help

[rmccoy]

or just a large segmented plane and some random material id's and a multi sub with a few differently rotated carpet bitmap types is probably the easiest. the joys of face mapping or physical scale

 

I need to get some sleep lol. after putting tons of thought into how to solve this I was thinking I had found a new approach. however the new approach was one you already suggested oh well lol.

[Tyorl]

Tile magic just don't repeat texture so u just need to tile texture so if u enter 25x25 in tilemagic u need ti make your original texture to tile 25 times so it is.

4. Another suggestion - try to use: http://www.3D-Rekonstruktionen.de/BricksNTiles/ very usefull texture generator for tiles/brick/parquet textures