Double Skin Facade

[joseph alexander]

I want to create a texture behind the first glass facade. I want the texture to be rooms that are either lit or dark. The tricky part is I want the room variations to tile randomly. Anyone know how to do this?

 

(max)

 

-joe

 

any other crits are welcome too.

[William Alexander]

Joseph,

 

You could try a self illumination map per facade. How it was modeled will dictate how the map is set up and can applied (uvw map).

 

Use a tile map in the self illumination slot, inner facade material. Start with 50% grey-color. Set the horz & vert counts to however you feel fits the facade/s. The color variance should be set to 0. The fade variance set to like 30 +/- to start. Map the tile to the face/s and or facade, your choice. If you have a uvw mapping applied already, set the slef ill. to channel 2 and apply a new mapping to ch2.

 

Lots of variables to achieve what you are after. Much depends upon how you modeled it and set up the materials. You could also PS abstract office interiors by using elevations (drawn or rendered), then set the tiled self illumination map to light it as part of the material.

 

Rendering is looking really good. Your on the right track with this lighting, as you already know. Your design?

 

WDA

[joseph alexander]

Sorry, i should be more specific. I would like to tile .jpgs randomly like how the brick option works. Like you mentioned I want little .jpgs of interiors, some lit some dark, some with little business people peering out.

 

The translucence of the facade is important, otherwise I'd just post process in lit rooms.

 

 

 

-joe

[Fran]

Hi Joe,

 

You could try dividing a planar surface (the inner skin) into elements and applying the MaterialByElement modifier. You would need to set up a multi-sub material with your bitmaps. I found this maxscript example in the Maxscript Help document. You need to convert a mesh or plane into an Editable Poly.

 

--The following script explodes an EditablePoly object to elements,

--each polygon becomes one element

--run the maxscript and then use Customize UI to add the PolyToElements

--to a toolbar. You will find it under the category "Help_Examples"

 

macroScript PolyToElements category:"Help_Examples"

 

(

 

on isEnabled return

 

selection.count == 1 and classof selection[1].baseobject == Editable_Poly

 

on execute do

 

(

 

obj = selection[1]

 

for p = polyop.getNumFaces obj to 1 by -1 do

 

polyOp.detachFaces obj #{p}

 

)

 

)

 

--End script

 

Once you have your epoly divided into elements, you need to convert it to an Editable Mesh for the MaterialByElement modifier to work. To see the effect in the viewport, you can't be in sub-object mode.

 

If you are using max 6, you can create your multi-sub mat with Architectural materials and enable "Raw Diffuse Texture".

 

Here is a screenshot:

 

I hope this is what you were looking for.

[joseph alexander]

Yes exactly. Thanks Fran!

 

I'll probably make a post Weds night. I new there was a way to do that.

 

-joe

[Tony]

Fran,

 

I tried your script method but I can't get the bitmaps to show only in the seperate elements as a whole image. The image is spread across the whole poly and then parts of it are displayed in the individual elements. I tried applying a UVW map set to faces but this splits the individual elements in half and displays the bitmap twice in the individual elements.

 

Have you found a workaround for this problem?

 

Tony

[Tony]

Fran,

 

Nevermind, I figured out how to get the individual images in each element using you script. Thanks!

 

Tony

[joseph alexander]

Coming along. Here's a test render. Windows are doing what I want. Gonna play with the lights a little bit more, its borderline too blown out. Also got a comment that it seems like its floating off the ground. Probably add a gradient going from the botton (dark) to a third of the way up the building.

 

 

 

 

-joe

[IC]

There was an excellent tutorial in Inside Lightwave 7 in which the rooms of a skyscraper were created and surfaced by copying all the window polygons and then beveling them to form tiny rooms which have various surface jpegs to give the required variety.

Worked really well in animations.

[joseph alexander]

here's the final.

used the material by element shader for the windows. (thanks fran!)

Changed my lighting set-up: One sun, two area lights.

The opacity of the side curtain wall isn't quite what I was shooting for but its an improvement over the previous one.

 

any comments welcome.

 

 

-joe

[Chad Warner]

Turned out great! The random facade really helps.

 

-Chad

[sanket]

Hi Joe,

 

You could try dividing a planar surface (the inner skin) into elements and applying the MaterialByElement modifier. You would need to set up a multi-sub material with your bitmaps. I found this maxscript example in the Maxscript Help document. You need to convert a mesh or plane into an Editable Poly.

 

--The following script explodes an EditablePoly object to elements,

--each polygon becomes one element

--run the maxscript and then use Customize UI to add the PolyToElements

--to a toolbar. You will find it under the category "Help_Examples"

 

macroScript PolyToElements category:"Help_Examples"

 

(

 

on isEnabled return

 

selection.count == 1 and classof selection[1].baseobject == Editable_Poly

 

on execute do

 

(

 

obj = selection[1]

 

for p = polyop.getNumFaces obj to 1 by -1 do

 

polyOp.detachFaces obj #{p}

 

)

 

)

 

--End script

 

Once you have your epoly divided into elements, you need to convert it to an Editable Mesh for the MaterialByElement modifier to work. To see the effect in the viewport, you can't be in sub-object mode.

 

If you are using max 6, you can create your multi-sub mat with Architectural materials and enable "Raw Diffuse Texture".

 

Here is a screenshot:

 

I hope this is what you were looking for.

can you have similar script for max9

[innerdream]

Nice, looks like a painting. I wish the camera was square, pet peeve.

[dmtr]

Joseph, I love the image, the the mood is great. Can you reveal how you made this reflection on glass facade? I'm strugling to get it with mental ray...Thanks.