Suggestions on how to model this irregular stone wall...

[Terri Brown]

Hi guys.

 

Some valued input would be greatly appreciated. Client has specifically asked for 3D geometry and not a texture of this wall (there are a few of them in the project and integral to the design):

 

 

SO! I tried for about a day or two to create the style in Railclone. No luck due to the edges of the segments being visible. See attached test:

 

 

created using these segments:

 

 

I eventually contacted Itoo who said that particular stone style is not possible to recreate with Railclone. Hence my predicament.

 

Suggestions on how you would go about modelling this which be greatly appreciated. It can't take me one week to make, and obviously also can't be too viewport/render intensive. One last joyful addition - the walls aren't solid, there are windows and doors cut out in quite a few places.

 

One suggestion was using the Fracture Script (which I used to create the RC segments) on the entire wall, but each wall is approx 9m high and 20m long...and there are 7 of them, so that would take forever to detail well.

 

Thanks everyone.

[maxryhan]

I think this will help you

https://forum.itoosoft.com/railclone-pro-(*)/pattern/msg20451/#msg20451

with color and UV randomization you can hide the tiling repetition .

If you have access to Substance Designer you can get good results too

with displacement map you can get almost identical result to modeling

Edited April 25, 2018 by maxryhan

[Terri Brown]

Thanks Max, but the difference between that post and my situation is that the bricks in that paving are all an identical size. Good luck finding a pattern in the wall I need to do!

[Scott Dombrowski]

Perhaps Rayfire? http://rayfirestudios.com/slider/bricks/

[Ernest Burden III]

Build a displacement texture from that photo. Do you need a much bigger 'run' of it? Having it all there in one shot is about as good as it gets. The lighting is fairly even over most of it. Some careful copying can extend it to be bigger.

 

I would usually make a map out of noises and apply that at displacement, but I rarely have such a perfect photo to work with.

[Terri Brown]

Build a displacement texture from that photo. Do you need a much bigger 'run' of it? Having it all there in one shot is about as good as it gets. The lighting is fairly even over most of it. Some careful copying can extend it to be bigger.

 

I would usually make a map out of noises and apply that at displacement, but I rarely have such a perfect photo to work with.

 

Thanks Ernest, but he has specifically asked for it not to be a map but rather 3D geometry, as it's an integral part of the design and he wants to see the grooves inbetween each stone clearly.

[Terri Brown]

Perhaps Rayfire? http://rayfirestudios.com/slider/bricks/

 

Thanks Scott. I had a look. Unfortunately can't cough up the $385 right now. Perhaps AFTER this project :/

 

However I have been using the Fracture Voronoi script off scriptspot (used it to create my initial segments for RC). I tried to apply it to the whole wall but it ended up crashing. Might try it in smaller chunks...

[Nicolai Bongard]

When using displacement it turns into geometry at rendertime, and you should be able to see the grooves and such. If however "real" geometry is a must, then perhaps make a lot of rocks with debrismaker or a similar plugin and use FFD boxes to manipulate/deform the rocks to fit into the scheme described in your pictures? Would take a lot of work, but would most likely look pretty good. You could also place the picture/texture on a plane, then cut along the grooves, select all the faces and inset a bit, then invert selection and delete the grooves, then shell the remaining geometry and tesselate it, add some noises and some turbosmooths and you get geometry that could look like the rocks/stones in the picture.

[Ernest Burden III]

Thanks Ernest, but he has specifically asked for it not to be a map but rather 3D geometry, as it's an integral part of the design and he wants to see the grooves inbetween each stone clearly.

 

Displacement IS real geometry. In Cinema4D I just map it onto a heavily subdivided surface and it does the displacement in the file, in the editor window, in 3D. I'm not talking about render-time SPD, though that would also work. The result will be exactly what you want and easy to implement. You have a great photo to work with.

[notamondayfan]

I'd personally do something like this -

 

Use splines to create shapes by tracing over the reference image. If it's a large area you're covering, make 1 large tilable section, then re-use.

 

The extrude the splines, using a touch of randomness. Find a script to help.

 

That'll give you a very good base.

 

Then add modifiers such as subdivide, tesselate, to add polygons.

 

Then add noise, warps, etc to distort the models.

 

Then add displacement, textures, etc to give it the right stone feel.

 

Should take a few hours max.

 

This method will kill RAM, but once it's done, vray proxy it, and it's no problem

 

[Terri Brown]

Displacement IS real geometry. In Cinema4D I just map it onto a heavily subdivided surface and it does the displacement in the file, in the editor window, in 3D. I'm not talking about render-time SPD, though that would also work. The result will be exactly what you want and easy to implement. You have a great photo to work with.

 

Thanks Ernest. That was what I had originally used (VrayDisplModifier), but client wasn't convinced. Maybe I need to recreate the walls in max (they're a skp import) and subdivide cleanly first..even if ever so slightly.

[Ernest Burden III]

Thanks Ernest. That was what I had originally used (VrayDisplModifier), but client wasn't convinced. Maybe I need to recreate the walls in max (they're a skp import) and subdivide cleanly first..even if ever so slightly.

 

Here's what I'm suggesting:

[Ernest Burden III]

Or, to be more literal...

 

I didn't do anything to the wall photo or map it carefully. You would want to do some Photoshop work to reduce the contrast of the lighter half of the tonal range to flatten out the surface bumps, as they are distracting when you push the displacement to get the grooves between the stones. My example could use another subdivide to get the finer detail--it was enough for my round stones that were never seen up close. I rendered with the capstone material to make the 3D nature of the result more clear (you would probably use a version of the photo as an image map).

 

Screen cap an elevation of your wall with the window openings in it. Use that as a line overlay in Photoshop to adjust your photo to give you proper stone edges around the opening(s). Then do the tonal work to create your diffuse and displacement maps.

 

 

[Terri Brown]

Or, to be more literal...

 

I didn't do anything to the wall photo or map it carefully. You would want to do some Photoshop work to reduce the contrast of the lighter half of the tonal range to flatten out the surface bumps, as they are distracting when you push the displacement to get the grooves between the stones. My example could use another subdivide to get the finer detail--it was enough for my round stones that were never seen up close. I rendered with the capstone material to make the 3D nature of the result more clear (you would probably use a version of the photo as an image map).

 

Screen cap an elevation of your wall with the window openings in it. Use that as a line overlay in Photoshop to adjust your photo to give you proper stone edges around the opening(s). Then do the tonal work to create your diffuse and displacement maps.

 

 

[ATTACH=CONFIG]56250[/ATTACH]

 

Thanks Ernest,

 

Unfortunately I'm not getting great results. It looks to me from your screengrabs that you are using the displace modifier instead of the VrayDisplacement Modifier? Am I correct?

 

Thanks

[Terri Brown]

This is what I'm getting using the standard Displace modifier. Still really pixelated (and not from a lack of geometry. Think the texture is too small and texture based displacement won't work for the A3 renders I need. Texture map is 1150 x 490 px.

 

[Ernest Burden III]

Thanks Ernest,

 

Unfortunately I'm not getting great results. It looks to me from your screengrabs that you are using the displace modifier instead of the VrayDisplacement Modifier? Am I correct?

 

Thanks

 

You are sort-of correct. I am using regular displacement in Cinema4D, not a render displacement. In my screengrab you can see the level of subdivide the flat poly is. It could use more, but the effect works. With some Photoshop work on the image it could be better.

 

How big an area do you need turned into 3D stones? Bigger than the photo? It would take a few minutes to turn a good version of your shot into a 3D object on my end. You should be able to get identical results with MAX, but if not, send me your processed photo (fit to wall elevation shape with the cut-outs you mentioned) and I will create the object and send it to you.

 

To work on the photo, you would be better off converting it to 16 bit before working, because displacement works with a grayscale value.

 

EDIT - Also, before using that wall image, it should be doubled in size to allow a few pixels to define the spaces between the stones. You might have to paint some dark into some of them to get the full 3D effect.

Edited April 29, 2018 by Ernest Burden

[Terri Brown]

Sorry for not replying Ernest. Have had my head in this darn wall. So I went with my initial aim of using Railclone and a bit of Dean's advice! See attached image of first test. Still have some work to do on it but can't spend much longer... Need some Railclone advice so am heading over to Itoo's forum!

[Justin Hunt]

what about forest pack?

[Justin Hunt]

OK forest pack dint work, too difficult to control. so I tried two other methodes

 

1) Debris maker to make a few rocks, then manually placed the rocks to make up the wall

2) Use generate topology on a subdivided plane then a whole bunch of modifiers and editing to randomize the rocks

 

Method 1 is tedious and will take a while to do but looks good, the resulting mesh is quite heavy. Method 2 is fairly quick but difficult to get to look natural. Meshes can be further optimized if necessary.

Edited May 4, 2018 by Justin Hunt

[Terri Brown]

Hi guys,

 

I realise that I never got around to posting my final stone wall model. Here's a little zoom in. I ended up tracing out individual stones and then making sure that they all fitted together in countless combinations in RC. It was tedious, but well worth it in the end.

 

[thomascoote]

Hi guys,

 

I realise that I never got around to posting my final stone wall model. Here's a little zoom in. I ended up tracing out individual stones and then making sure that they all fitted together in countless combinations in RC. It was tedious, but well worth it in the end.

 

[ATTACH=CONFIG]56399[/ATTACH][ATTACH=CONFIG]56400[/ATTACH]

 

That looks amazing, would you be able to share your Railclone graph? I've made some pretty complex stuff with RC, but scratching my head at how you got such a good result.

[Terri Brown]

Sorry Thomas, but I only saw this now. Here are some screenshots (the whole thing is too big so I tried zoom in two parts...hope you can make sense of it!):