Best approach to create this flooring

[Creationtwentytwo]

Hey all.

 

I'm struggling to figure out a decent approach to laying out the flooring slabs on the landscaping of a job I'm currently doing.

 

I've enclosed the drawing in question, and highlighted the kind of areas which are proving tricky.

 

The blue area in particular.

 

Now, the problem is that the tile layout curves on two axis, as well as having a slight curve as you can see from the plan view, it is also sloping upwards. The levels rise and fall along the pathway.

 

In the red area, the tiles are just laid out and cut at the edges to fit the area, which shouldn't prove too difficult to place, but then to slope them is what I'm having issues with.

 

The biggest problem is the blue area. Those tiles are laid to fit the curve (in reality, they'll all be recangular tiles with the curve being formed from varying the joint widths), so the only option I can see is to place them by hand... which I obviously don't really want to do.

 

Also being curved means just using a texture may not work too well. The only way I could see doing it with a texture is to make the curved shape using a plane, then snap the UV's horizontally so the tile texture curves with the geometry, but there'll be some nasty stretching.

 

If anyone's got any suggestions that'd be awesome.

 

Thanks

 

Full Size Image: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/4627207/GroundWorksPlanWITHMARKING.jpg

 

[Dave Buckley]

would spline mapping not help?

 

I could be well out here though

[Creationtwentytwo]

Thanks Dave,

 

Spline mapping would allow me to texture it, but to be honest if I used a curved plane then the geometry would be simple to unwrap manually anyway.

 

What I'd have to do though is unwrap it straight (since slab/tile textures would be straight), which would then show the texture curving with the geometry. There'd obviously be some stretching though and since some of the camera positions will most likely be right next to the floor, I'd prefer to use geometry if possible.

[Dave Buckley]

ok then, how about, again I'm just second guessing

 

model the plane (with curvature)

draw the line that the slabs are to follow

shapemerge it onto the plane (so line follows the contour of the plane)

convert plane to edit poly

select the new edges from the shapemerge

detach them from the plane (so you effectively had a line that exactly follows your curvature)

using the spacing tool for your slab geometry to follow the line

 

I may have misunderstood what you are trying to do, but the above method should get square geometry following curvature without stretching and too much manual labour

[Creationtwentytwo]

Great suggestion thanks Dave.

 

It certainly won't be a quick task.

 

The alternative I guess would be to use the FloorGen script along with Bend, which might be quicker but far less accurate than the method you detailed.

 

Well, at least I have a couple of approaches now, thanks again Dave, much appreciated!

[Dave Buckley]

bending the floor gen script will give you obvious bending on the geometry but yes it will be quicker.

 

only slightly quicker thing I can think of is to create quite a tesselated plane to start with, then use the outline from the .dwg (if you have one) shapemerge that onto your plane, convert to edit poly, delete the unwanted polys outside the outline (perimeter),

bend the result into shape

 

then technically you've already got all your bent lines ready for extracting and using the spacing tool

 

select one, loop, extract, space

select one, loop extract, space

 

perhaps swiftloop on the graphite tools could help.

 

let us know how you get on

[erickdt]

Could you bring in a high resolution version of the plain above into Photoshop and use it to make a custom texture for each area and then planar map it to the geometry?

 

E

[matthewgriswold]

Could be an extreme solution, but this video has some interesting pointers. It deals with the PatchDeform modifier for boxes across, you guessed it, a Patch surface.

 

http://designreform.net/2008/05/3ds-max-modifiers-patch-deform/

 

If you array out presized tiles off to the side, PatchDeform could help with lying the tiles across the sloping surface, which also curves in plan.

[Creationtwentytwo]

Thanks for the further replies guys, great tips.

 

I also picked up another potential method; the PathDeform WSM which allow me to bend a set of slabs to a spline. Very similar to patch deforming.

 

So I should be well and truly prepared to tackle this now!

 

Thanks again

[Ismael]

This "Know How" may prove useful here or in another project.

http://www.vizdepot.com/forums/showthread.php?p=84191#post84191

[Creationtwentytwo]

Thanks Ismael.

 

I can't seem to access the link. Is the site down or is it a permissions issue?

[Ismael]

No, this page displays without logon; try again. Also see this:

http://www.vizdepot.com/forums/showthread.php?t=10315

[Creationtwentytwo]

Still can't see either link, I get a 'Forbidden' page.

 

If I visit the VizDepot homepage I get an Apache test page, suggesting they're having problems server side.

[Ismael]

Could you try just the main site and go down to Photoshop in forums?

[Creationtwentytwo]

Nope definitely not working. I'll try another browser.

 

EDIT: Nope, no luck in Chrome or IE.

[Crazy Homeless Guy]

Could you bring in a high resolution version of the plain above into Photoshop and use it to make a custom texture for each area and then planar map it to the geometry?

 

E

 

+1.

 

It looks like you have CAD lines, I would open them in Illustrator, and move them to Photoshop as paths. Then create a base texture for color and tone, and sweep the paths to place the joint lines into the pattern, and then save as a texture.

[Creationtwentytwo]

Thanks CHG, that's a great idea... I would've gone with that but I've managed to do it now. I didn't take any screenshots today, but I'll probably post some finals when I'm done with the project.

 

The way I did it in the end was to create the pathways straight with FloorGen to the correct size (or as close as I could get), then trace a spline along one of the curves of the path, with just 3 points, two corner points and a smooth in the middle. Then I used the WSM PathDeform to fit the pathway to the curve, collapse, and use another spline to get the vertical slope.

 

This meant I could get as accurate as possible on the curve in plan view, and exact accuracy on the slope due to being able to set the spline points at the correct heights.

 

Overall, a fairly simple solution to what initially seemed like a complex task! Thanks for all the replies... if anyone ever asks you to do CG on a house with a lot of curves, I advise you consider your sanity for a minute before taking it on