Asphalt road; limestone sill

[stevel]

I'm pretty new at this, but trying to learn (one step at a time!). Currently I'm using Sketchup and Kerkythea. I would like to learn to make realistic asphalt roads using textures, but so far I've had less than satisfactory results--lots of tiling (even though the textures are seamless), or just a flat expanse of gray, or whatever.

 

Do you have any tips or direction I can go to learn to do this better?

 

I also need help in making a realistic limestone texture for sills, window surrounds, etc. (again, using texture maps) I've searched far and wide and have come up with zero!

 

Thanks in advance

[Claudio Branch]

 

I would like to learn to make realistic asphalt roads using textures, but so far I've had less than satisfactory results--lots of tiling (even though the textures are seamless), or just a flat expanse of gray, or whatever.

 

 

A little trick that I use is to drop the textures' blur value to 0 (0.01 actually) and use a noise map in the bump slot. You will want the size of the noise to be pretty small (5-10) and the bump value around 15-30. I will also the same noise map in the Specular slot to accentuate the highlights of the road surface.

 

It all really depends on the scale of the texture you are tiling.

[stevel]

I must be doing something wrong (lol!) because it came out looking like coils of spaghetti.

 

How do I change the blur value of the texture and what do you mean by the noise size at 5-10?

[Claudio Branch]

You will find the Blur value spinner in the bottom left corner of the Coordinates Tab for the "Bitmap" designated texture.

 

Noise Size is located mid-field of the Noise Parameters Tab. Size is the scale of the Noise. It works in conjunction with it's own Tiling values and any UVW Texture Mapping values as well.

 

Play with it! You will get it eventually. If any of my descriptions are confusing just do a search using the User Reference help built into Max.

 

When in doubt, RTFM.

 

And I mean that in kind friendly way. I really do...

 

[stevel]

I'm not working with Max, so I think Kerkythea has different settings, but I'll try!

[sutcac]

Have you tried the Kerkythea forum? I think there are several good materials available in the Materials part of the forum, or in the repository

 

I might consider using the same technique they suggest for grass, short of actual modeled grass using the Instancing Brush. Essentially, create a duplicate plane just above the main one, rename the material, and then use a clip map to break it up a bit. This gives it some depth, randomness, and hides some tiling sins.

[Klokwerks]

Go take pictures of some roads and limestone. In the past whenever I needed some decent textures for something, I just went out with my camera and took some pictures of what i needed. Everything is readily available and it free! ..or you can always search online and buy some nice textures to keep on file.

[Ron Schatz ASAI]

Klokwerks got it on.

Get a bigger image, maybe just as gray scale image to help with file size. I use an old artbeats file for use in my print days.

The gray scale images can be added the to the diffusion, bump, color, and specular channels, all or just one.

My limestone mat. is a noisy tan and red stone looking canvas painting, go figure but it looks better than a photo texture, so try any large image that might work, it might work great or not at all.

Good luck.