Brick Pattern - Creating new brick texture

[Anonymous]

Hi,
I'm wondering how to create a brick pattern in English Bond (this is alternate courses of stretcher bricks and headers) in a multi-yellow colour.
I believe you can photograph examples and map ??
Does anyone have any advise please ?
Thanks
Rob

[Karl Ottenstein]

I've moved this to the Presentation forum, where material discussions happen.

The easiest might be to just change the color of an existing brick image from the library using a photo editor. The default AC image files are pitiful. In the US library, the [TImg] Arroway-Textures 11 are way better.

You can map any image as a material, but it takes a few tips (or a 3rd party program) to get your photograph perfectly tile-able and with a believable light. More work if you want a bump map. There are lots of discussions and how-to's in this forum. Use the search function. Or, maybe someone will link to them for you. 😉

Cheers,
Karl

[Karl Ottenstein]

It looks like you asked a very similar question last summer:
http://archicad-talk.graphisoft.com/viewtopic.php?p=96658#96658

Dwight gave you an algorithmic shader answer for Lightworks. If you really want a photographed/image texture, that's a different answer.

Karl

[Anonymous]

Thanks Karl,
I shall re-check Dwights advice and thanks for yours. How would I get to the US Library Arroway-Textures ?
Rgds
Rob

[Ralph Wessel]

Rob wrote:
I'm wondering how to create a brick pattern in English Bond (this is alternate courses of stretcher bricks and headers) in a multi-yellow colour. I believe you can photograph examples and map ??

In addition to Karl's suggestions, you can make a seamless texture from a simple photo. You will need software for editing images, ideally something like Photoshop but there are cheaper alternatives.

Referring to the attached image:

1) Take a photo of the target material with the lighting as even as possible. The ideal is a slightly overcast day in an unshaded area, because you get a very diffuse, even light with good colour. It can help if the surface of the material casts some shadow, because it provides a measure of relief, but too much will ruin the effect. Also, try to position your view to minimise the distortion from your perspective, because the end result has to appear to be a perfect elevation. Decent software should provide tools to skew or deform the image to eliminate this distortion. When you crop the material sample from your photo, think carefully about the borders. It helps if they somehow align to joints or other repetitive elements in the material to minimise the cleanup afterward (and to ensure the sample repeats in even units). Also, avoid samples with one segment that is significantly different from the rest - when the texture is tiled, your eye will be drawn to the contrasting part and notice the repetition (almost like a dashed grid).

2) Software like Photoshop should provide a tool to offset the image, but every developer likes to use a different name for the tool. The function of the tool is to offset or shift the whole image by a specified number of pixels, and the parts which flow off the edge are wrapped around to the opposite side. If you offset the image by approximately half its size, you will clearly see the tile junction running through the centre of the image. This makes it relatively easy to clean up.

3) Again, software like Photoshop will have something like a 'stamp' or 'clone' tool, which enables you to airbrush one part of the image over another. You can use this to great effect to clean up the tile junction by cloning similar (whole) parts of the image over the broken or ragged tile edges.

I've made many textures from site photos this way - invaluable for restoration projects or extensions.

[Anonymous]

Brilliant, thanks Ralph, we shall experiment.
Rgds
Rob

[Eduardo Rolon]

And/Or you can try ImageSynth

www.luxology.com/whatismodo/imageSynth.aspx

[stefan]

ejrolon wrote:
And/Or you can try ImageSynth

www.luxology.com/whatismodo/imageSynth.aspx

While this app might be nice (I have it free with 3D World Magazine, but don't have the correct Photoshop version to try it), it is still good to know the manual approach.

There are numerous tutorials to create seamless textures with Photoshop. There is also a nice tip on reducing lighting differences between the sides of a photograph:
http://3drender.com/light/EqTutorial/tiling.htm

However, considering the time it takes to create a seamless texture and the price of commercial CD-ROMS or DVD's, you have to think what is most economic: browsing through different catalogs of decent seamless textures or creating them yourselves.

The Arroway textures
http://www.arroway.de
are commercial, but you can download free "low-resolution" samples from the website. Be warned, even the low-resolution samples from Arroway (+/- 800x600) are large when compared with the default ArchiCAD textures. The original ones are commonly 9000x6000 pixels.

[Ralph Wessel]

stefan wrote:
However, considering the time it takes to create a seamless texture and the price of commercial CD-ROMS or DVD's, you have to think what is most economic: browsing through different catalogs of decent seamless textures or creating them yourselves.

This is certainly true for many new-build projects, especially early design, where you want a particular effect and you can select a texture to suit.

When it comes to restoration/refurbishment, it can easily be more time-effective to make your own textures. On some occasions I've spent a good deal of time trying to find an existing texture to match a stone or tile from a particular locale without success, but made my own texture map from a photo within 15 minutes. I think the key to making good textures quickly is having a good photo to start with.

[Anonymous]

why not try this - it's free, easy to use and makes great brick textures.

http://www.beldenbrick.com/

link at top of page to install

HTH