ArchiCAD Italian tile roof to C4D

[Anonymous]

I have exported an ArchiCAD 8.1 Italian tile roof into Cinema 4D 8. the attached picture shows the roof in ArchiCAD with the randomize material option on, but when I import into Cinema the tiles do not randomize, but sort of get into rows.

I think the randomize option makes it look more realistic.

Does anyone know why I get this problem?

We export from ArchiCAD to Cinema 4D via DXF. We find this option works well for us and is easy to keep texture names for final texturing in Cinema.

I also tried exporting in 3DS format but I had the same problem.

Any suggestions?

Brent

ArchiCAD 8.1 R1 Windows XP SP1

[stefan]

I guess randomise is just an internal trick for the ArchiCAD renderer. I guess it doesn't export into correct texture-coordinates for OBJ/3ds files, so that would explain why this isn't exported into Cinema4D.

And if you export through DXF, texture mapping won't be translated at all, so there is no way any ArchiCAD-texture mapping information will survive the translation.

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But there are other 'tricks':
You can try to mix two materials in Cinema4D (using a noise-map as an alpha-mask). Or mix more of them.

Let's see if I can show you how...

LAYER MATERIALS
In Cinema4D you can "layer" materials over eachother. Just apply more then one material to the object. The righmost material icon is the "top". To show the other materials through, you need to change it's alpha-mapping/clip mapping.

MIX MATERIALS
This is an option in the texture tag. Beware that mixing bright colors can lead to very bright end result color.
You can add many textures. Only the "active" channels will be mixed. Use the alpha-channel to save parts that should not be mixed.

The material combinations are not so powerfull as in 3ds max or Maya, but by applying multiple materials, there is much you can achieve. Try to mix bitmaps with procedural materials and add colorisation to them as well. The possibilities are endless (and complex).