Image map sizing (brick & cmu)

[cellophane]

I have a potentially dumb question:

 

I'm working on creating some standard maps for use in the office (Revit 2013) and am not sure about map sizing - in particular for repeating elements like brick. If I make a soldier course, assuming a fairly consistent brick color, how many units wide is a good number for the map itself? Theoretically it could be one unit + grout but would the excessive amount of tiling by the software be worse than using a larger map of 4 or 8 units? For fill patterns (running bond) it's not quite such a dilemma since the map needs to be larger to minimize visual tiling.

 

The other part of this is does the map start half-way through a grout joint or on the edge of a brick?

 

Or am I overthinking the entire process?

[Devin Johnston]

There is no standard size for a map it just needs to be large enough to hold up to whatever resolution your rendering to and to minimize tiling. Having said that I normally create maps with pixel sizes around 2500x2000 or larger if the map calls for it.

[Scott Schroeder]

I tend to work in power of 2 texture sizes, 512,1024,2048, etc. It's just old school and I tend to re-use a lot of my textures later on in side projects in real time engines. I also try to keep all the maps the same size, right now I'm happy with 2048x2048. Another thing I try to do is keep all of the maps the same scale, using the grids in Photoshop as guides. This way, if I wanted to, I could apply a global UVW modifier to all the geometry in my scene at 12x12x12 and everything will be the correct scale. This just keeps me from having to remember if Brick A is 5x5x10 UVW or 6x6x6 or what not.

[unrinoceronte]

I tend to work in power of 2 texture sizes, 512,1024,2048, etc. It's just old school ..... Another thing I try to do is keep all of the maps the same scale, using the grids in Photoshop as guides. This way, if I wanted to, I could apply a global UVW modifier to all the geometry in my scene at 12x12x12 and everything will be the correct scale. This just keeps me from having to remember if Brick A is 5x5x10 UVW or 6x6x6 or what not.

 

Scott, this is quite useful, i never tought about that... making all textures the same size as you mention can be quite time saver!...

 

@CHAD: i don´t know if this can be usefull to you, but in my case, something like bricks or wood planks, i try to use around 30 rows respectively... One thing that i find useful is to work the texture in PS, then make the CANVAS bigger by 300%, then copy the layer 8 times, so having 3 rows of Maps and 3 columns... That way i can see if the map tiling looks good or bad when it repeats... If it looks bad, i select the ORIGINAL Map in the CENTER, do some photoshoping (cloning, magic wand, Dodge, Burn, etc) only to that one, erase the others, and COPYE again 8 times in 3 rows and columns, this repeats until Tiling Disappears for the most of it...