New Project-New Material

[trhoads]

Well, it is a new material to me. We are starting a new project with a clay tile roof, and attached is my first attempt at creating it. It needs to be detailed, so I can not just use flat material maps. Any suggestions, or comments so far. Thanks in advance.

[Tim Nelson]

I think you've got it nailed. Looks a little oversaturated, but that's just a minor thing. Maybe you could mix in a slight dirt texture to give it even more randomness.

[trhoads]

I plan on tweaking the maps for the individual colors a little, but I don't want it to tile too badly, so that every tile of a color has the same dirty spot, or color variation. Any closeups will also be the first time i really tweak in Photoshop. A lot of this project will be firsts for me. If I was EBIII, I would create a log thread, but I am not him.

[raterry]

Nice job, I'm about to create the exact same type of roof, only with several different angles, heights, hips, gables, etc., so I definately worry about poly count. I made one a year or so ago that was very similar to yours but the roof had more polys than the entire building including furniture! Here's to hoping you've found a brilliant way to make that roof--which I think is called barrel tile--whichout breaking the polygon bank.

 

PS add a dirt map and you're there.

-=rob

[trhoads]

The polygon bank has been robbed. That is only the roof for one 20'-0" square tower. 187,880 faces. I can turn half of them off on the backside for rendering, once i start the building, i am guessing this one will get out of hand. I am planning on doing the roof seperate, once i learn the method of rendering to a Photoshop layer, and compositing. As mentioned, most of this will be experimental.

[piotrgreg]

hi

for me looks ok

but everything depends of the final resolution rendering

not bad using some dirt map, but some clients love clean materials:)

good luck

Piotr

[Atom]

That roof looks great. Did you model all of the roof tiles or what was the process you took i've tried to make roofs look just like yours. I use autocad and render in max what is your method. Thanks looks great!

[Ernest Burden III]

The polygon bank has been robbed. That is only the roof for one 20'-0" square tower. 187,880 faces.

 

Can you post a wireframe?

 

And...do not be afraid, be the EBIII.

[DennisHolland]

Hi Throads,

 

it's great, I'd love to see the final result.

 

One question; what about your polycount? If I'm doing a modelled rooftile, I usually get in trouble because the extensive polycount, especially when there are several roofings involved. How did you manage or reduce this issue? (or do you encouter the same problems?)

 

Good luck, nice job.

 

Dennis

________________________________

Dennis de Priester Interactive Media

The Netherlands

[vizwhiz]

hi There

 

Throads

 

one possible way of lowering the polygon count

is to make the "bottom" of the clay tile roof FLAT

 

make the 1st Foot or so curved Top and Bottom

but Then have the underside completely "boxed-in"

 

i will make a image, brb

 

**

 

extrude the Top profile for a Foot

 

Then move the bottom profile 1 Ft

Then extrude the remainder of the ClayTile Roof size

 

the profile is simplified i usually make a 10 ft section Then array

 

i have used This to keep down the file size of ClayTileRoof(s)

we have a lot of Spanish, Mediterrainean and/or Mission Clay roofs in AZ

 

**

 

Randy

[skogskalle]

if the polycount gets too insane, you could always try a displacement map instead...

I did some quick tests the other day for a current project (with some buildnings with clay roofs). however in my project none of the roofs are close to the camera so it doesnt have to look perfect...

 

made the displacementmap with two mixed gradient ramp maps... this was my first attempt, and Im sure you can get much better results if you give it some time...

 

heres how it looks... not as sweet as modeled fooftiles, but good enough for distance-shots...

the nice thing heres ofcourse that the whole roof is only 4 polygons... (downside is that Vray displacement renders slower than actual geometry...)

[trhoads]

That roof looks great. Did you model all of the roof tiles or what was the process you took i've tried to make roofs look just like yours. I use autocad and render in max what is your method. Thanks looks great!

 

Thanks. I do use AutoCad for all of my modeling. Archaic as it is, it works for me, and I like my results. I modeled the first course, since they are flat to the roof deck, then copied them up at a distance, rotated them to overlap properly, then started making copies of the second row, and assigning different layers to them, so that i could get the variation in color. Then I made the ridges, by far the hardest part. For me anyway. After I had enough to cover one face of the roof, i deleted the pieces i did not need, subtracted out the ridge from what was left, then arrayed the final section, around to the three other sides.

 

I then file link to VIZ and assign materials and set up my lighting. For this, it was just one small directional light, not much to it. It does have a lot of bits and pieces to it. I need to redo my end caps on the ridge, I am not happy with them. VIZ 3i does not count polygons, maybe it does, but I am not sure where to find that.

 

one possible way of lowering the polygon count

is to make the "bottom" of the clay tile roof FLAT

 

I thought of that too, I might try it. I am going to try changing my overlap and tile size. I am currently using a 12" tile, with an exposure of 8".

 

Can you post a wireframe?

And...do not be afraid, be the EBIII.

 

I attached a wire-frame, just a corner. Zoomed out too much just leaves a solid mass, no real wire-frame.

 

And I would start another log, but I am using so many programs that are out of date, it would not help anyone. My process is also a little disjointed, since I will work for a couple days, then get distracted by another project.

 

if the polycount gets too insane, you could always try a displacement map instead... .

 

I don't think VIZ 3i does displacement. I could be wrong, but I think it lacks that function.

 

Thanks for all of the response. I hope to start the rest of the project in the next week or so. I will post more as it develops.

[raterry]

Hey guys,

spent the morning trying to optimize our little roof and the best I do while retaining the need for detail was about 25% of the polys/faces in throads original 20x20 roof. This should have enough detail for however close you want to get and it only has 49318 faces. Still alot but almost 4 times less. I'll post a couple images to see if you agree.

-=rob

[trhoads]

raterry,

 

it looks like your tiles are all on 1 layer, how would you assign multiple colors that way. i am hoping that we go to a monochrome color for the tiles, and not the assorted, that will allow me to make them solid, and union them all into one big piece, and just have a materila map color with slight variations.

[Brian Cassil]

If it were me I would instance all (or most) of the roof tiles as lofts and use the adjust the shape steps in the loft parameters to control the number of faces. For most views I think you could get away with 1/10th the faces you have on those tiles. For the close ups, simply go to one of the tiles and kick the shape steps up 1 or 2 notches. I realize you are modeling this in autocad and I'm not 100% sure if you are rendering in Max/Viz or not, but whatever program you are using there should be a similar approach.

[raterry]

"how would you assign multiple colors that way"

 

I didn't do any mapping yet as you can see, just an orange diffuse map. There are two ways.

-1st would be before I attached all the tiles to make one large object, I'd apply various colors to the individual tiles and when I was ready to attach them all I'd have the option to create a multi-sub object material that contained all the different color maps. That way the individual colors(materials) would be applied on a sub-object level.

-2nd way, easier but probably not as realistic-we'll see shortly-would be to create a bitmap in Pshop that had all the different color tiles on it in approximately the same size/aspect of the tiles in the model and apply to whole mesh and tile material accordingly using a UVW modifier. I'll try both ways and we'll see which one is more successful.

-=rob

[Atom]

raterry what was your process to create the roof, the ridges on your model sorta resemable the built in block in archiCAD for applying the ridges, or did you model them?

Thanks looks good!

[raterry]

Atom,

I use MAX to model everything. I'm not much of a CAD guy though I'm trying to learn. If your interested, I'll post a detailed description of how I did it in MAX tomorrow when I get a few minutes. Let me know.

-=Rob

[Atom]

Atom,

I use MAX to model everything. I'm not much of a CAD guy though I'm trying to learn. If your interested, I'll post a detailed description of how I did it in MAX tomorrow when I get a few minutes. Let me know.

-=Rob

 

Raterry

I would be interested when you have some extra time. Thanks Alot!

[raterry]

trhoads,

In case you're still interested here is the roof tile with just a bitmap material applied to entire mesh. No need to color each individual tile.

 

Atom, I'll be posting how I modeled the tile shortly.

[Atom]

Whenever your ready Thanks.

[trhoads]

trhoads,

In case you're still interested here is the roof tile with just a bitmap material applied to entire mesh. No need to color each individual tile.

 

How did you get the color to be localized to the tiles? It looks like the color of one tile, stays that way, even when it wraps under another tile of a different color. I tried this method too, and the color of the tile will change when it extends into the next color range, or the tile next to it. That is one reason I nded up with 6 different tile layers in AutoCAD, and 6 materials in VIZ.

[raterry]

Trhoads,

The color "staying" with the tile as it goes under another tile is actually an illusion. I'll post a couple pics explaining how the mapping is applied to simulate different colored tiles using the one bitmap.

-=rob

[raterry]

Hey Atom, and anyone else who may want to view...

Here is a link to a tutorial I did on how to make a Spanish tile roof.

 

http://www.robeccaproductions.com/Spanish_Tile_toot.htm

 

any comments on the tut. would be appreciated as it's my 1st one.

Thanks,

-=Rob

[trhoads]

Good tut,

 

It reminded me that when I linked my AutoCAD file to VIZ, I still had some of my curve step settings and interpolation settings cranked for super smooth curves. I plan on linking the roof independently from the rest of the building, and will optimize the roof tiles that way. Thanks for pointing that out.