Slate tiles material settings

[Matt Sugden]

Hi there, I'm doing a lot of slate/ plain clay roof tiles on projects at the moment, and I'm almost never happy with the look of the finished material.

 

I often combine the texture map of the manufacturers material with a relf /highlight glossiness of about 0.4, sub divs of about 30, and a reflection value of about 79/79/79 dark to mid grey colour. And add a very slight bump maybe 10% of the same texture but in greyscale.

 

I normally assign about 5 different random tile textures across the main tile geometry using the material by element modifier.

 

Can anyone suggest any tips for getting a more realistic looking roof texture/ material?

 

I've attached a wip to give you an idea of what I'm talking about.

Edited July 4, 2008 by Bewdy

[Trevor Tizard]

They look really good...............too big, but very good.

[whori]

i remember doing something very familiar... so i modeled every tile few thousands of tiles..that was serious:D but it looked nice

[Dave Buchhofer]

you using displacement or is that modeled? I think it looks good as is, i'd maybe add a little VrayDirt to the diffuse to shadow up the nooks and crannies a little more if thats an option speedwise.

 

other than that, just varying the hue/sat of the diffuse also, and varying the amount and gloss of the reflections in the tile materials.

[Matt Sugden]

thanks for the comments. the tiles are all modeled, apart from the ridges which are half cylinders with a tile bump.

 

I'd like to know a bit more about the vray dirt map stuff? how would I effectively apply this over the whole roof so it looks natural, given that currently each tile is textured individually?

 

Or do I apply the dirt map to each texture individually?

 

I assume this is different to using a bmp dirtmap?

 

Cheers