Belgium block curb

[christophercrocco]

I'm working on rendering the exterior to a house. I'm trying to make a Belgium block curb for the driveway. Any tips or tutorials?

[Scott Schroeder]

Rail Clone, just grab the free version. Make your segment, create your path, rail clone it.

 

Sweep or loft a profile, edit poly, then select every Nth segment. Chamfer, then bevel/extrude.

 

Loft your profile. Apply mapping coordinate with the loft, then use textures and displacement.

[christophercrocco]

Didn't know rail clone could do that. I was trying to do it by applying a bit map.

[christophercrocco]

I'm a total noob btw.

 

Scott- do you have any pics of how your method looks?

[Scott Schroeder]

I'm a total noob btw.

 

Scott- do you have any pics of how your method looks?

 

Sorry, I didn't clarify. My response was three different techniques.

 

A: Use Rail Clone from iToo software. Grab the free version (http://www.itoosoft.com/railclone/description.php)

B: Loft a shape, convert into an edit poly, then bevel/extrude every Nth edge

C: Loft a shape, then apply mapping coordinates within the loft to get accurate UVW's around your curves. Then use a combo of textures or displacement maps.

 

You can do it by using textures, but you need proper textures and mapping coordinates.

[Chris MacDonald]

I'd do what Scott said and use Railclone if you need it to be fairly high detail... But if you're not wanting to go down the plugin route, i'd use a Sweep rather than a loft as it'll generate mapping coordinates for you.

 

What I've done (before railclone) is as follows:

 

1) Draw the spline along which your curb is going to be swept

 

2) Draw the profile of your curb

 

3) Apply sweep modifier to spline and choose custom section, select your curb profile and tick "generate mapping coordinates"

 

You now have the base geometry from which to build your curb, and if you want you can try the following to add more detail;

 

4) Apply (beneath your sweep modifier) an Edit Spline modifier and in sub object mode select your spline and use the Divide function to divide your spline into segments roughly equal to your curbstone lengths.

 

5) Select all of the vertices at the ends of each curbstone and fillet them (by a small amount, say 5mm to 10mm) and go into segment mode and delete all of the small segments between curbstones that this has created. When you exit sub object mode and go to the top of the modifier stack (the sweep you set up earlier) you'll see that this has now created lots of individual curbstones with 5 to 10mm gaps between.

 

6) Apply your material.

 

7) This part is optional, but again will give a greater level of realism/detail. Apply a material by element modifier and set it to random, create a multi-sub object material with several similar but not identical materials - perhaps just use UVW offsets of the original material, or some simple colour corrections.

 

8) With this material applied you should now have a curbstone with lots of individual curbs, with gaps in between and semi-random textures applied. Because it's been set up with a modifier stack you can always go back to make edits to the original spline, though this may have a knock on effect on the edit spline applied above - but it doesn't take much work to re-do it. Sounds like a lot of work, but once you've done it you'll realise that it really isn't.

[christophercrocco]

rail clone lite only has one option for curbing and its more of a public street type curb than a residential type. Further instructions on using rail clone? seems like the quickest way. Not looking for it to be too detailed because it is off in the distance of the rendering.

[BVI]

I second rail clone. Its an awesome plugin.

[christophercrocco]

if someone could give me some direction on using rail clone lite to do the belgium block curb. that would be great.

[Chris MacDonald]

Seriously? http://www.itoosoft.com/railclone/tutorials.php

[Scott Schroeder]

Watch the tutorials on iToo's website. They will tell you everything you need to know. It's fairly simple. Create a path for your curb. Create a curb section. Then, use rail clone.

 

Sweeps are okay, but lofts have better mapping control as you can tell how many times you want to repeat your map in horizontal or vertical direction. Sweeps pretty much stick basic mapping on there and you have to control it through your tiling on your map.

 

If this is off in the distance, just use a lofted or swept curb. You'll never tell the difference.

[christophercrocco]

got it

Edited December 11, 2012 by christophercrocco
figured it out

[christophercrocco]

thank you scott for clearing that up. i get it now

[salvador]

Watch the tutorials on iToo's website. They will tell you everything you need to know. It's fairly simple. Create a path for your curb. Create a curb section. Then, use rail clone.

 

Sweeps are okay, but lofts have better mapping control as you can tell how many times you want to repeat your map in horizontal or vertical direction. Sweeps pretty much stick basic mapping on there and you have to control it through your tiling on your map.

 

If this is off in the distance, just use a lofted or swept curb. You'll never tell the difference.

 

Agree. I've got better results with a Loft, specially for winding curbs. My workflow is to tile the mapping Nth times in one directions until my unit length is correct; maps perfectly.

 

I want to try the Sweep technique described above. I feel I can get a lot of nice variations on a per-stone basis.