Random Metal Panel Colors

[epelj1]

I'm trying to do a facade using an Alucobond type of metal panel system. The architect wants 4 colors randomly applied to the panels (not random colors, just randomly placed). I know there are scripts out there to do this with various geometry, but is there a way to achieve this without modeling each panel?

 

I've attached the Alucobond material I'm using if that helps in anyway.

 

Alucobond.zip

[John Dollus]

look up the 'material by element' modifier if your panels are modeled.

[epelj1]

They're not modeled, It's just a simple face with the material applied.

[Corey Beaulieu]

What he said....

 

and I'll add that you should use a VrayMultiTexMap,

 

[John Dollus]

i don't have the older version of vray so I can't see the particulars of your material but if you add another tile map into your metal panel section and change your fade variance from 0.0 to something else, you will get the variation you are looking for in the grid appearance. You may have to rework your material a bit depending on how you have it layered but using the procedural tiles map is the right track given your current approach.

 

That said, I'd suggest altering your approach and modeling the joints instead. If you can get what you want with the tiles map, you can certainly snap the joints into the model easily enough. It will open up a lot of options for you in both tweaking the rendered look and also post production tweaks.

[epelj1]

Honestly, what I'm worried about are changes later on. I'm modeling in cad, and changes could be tedious. I could add the joints in 3ds, to the imported simple geometry, but I'm afraid that's past my level of experience.

 

add another tile map into your metal panel section

 

Can you elaborate on that?

[Dimitris Tolios]

What about Floor Generator script by CG-Source?

[epelj1]

Is it possible to create a box with the appropriate segments to represent the panels, then use the material by element modifier (or some other way) to apply a multi/sub-object material to the box?

[n3CRO]

Sure, maybe it is easier to asign ID's within polygon/element mode and apply a multi/sub-object material as you mentioned

Is it possible to create a box with the appropriate segments to represent the panels, then use the material by element modifier (or some other way) to apply a multi/sub-object material to the box?

[epelj1]

What I finally ended up doing was creating a box in max with the segments as I need, subtract out whatever geometry I had done in cad, then (the extremely tedious portion) exploded each poly out of the box, reattached them as a mesh, then applied the materialbyelement mod.

 

Got the end result that I was looking for. Just took longer than I thought it would.

[John Dollus]

instead of exploding each poly manually, you could have added an edit poly modifier, select all vertices and use break to separate all of the elements at once.

[epelj1]

That might be helpful. Thanks!