Hi I'm working on a scene that has brick walls- as you can see by the picture the wall to the left looks pretty good (altho I wish I culd get more bump)- but the wall to the right's bricks look blurred-especially at the top over the garage door- and they are the exact shader- made from a texture map of bricks-i have the "interpolation, guassian, and they are tiled by a precise number for both-- even if I adjust the camera around it still looks blurred- any ideas? Thanks Daf

Actually, those may not be the options you want. Gaussian is sort of like it is in Photoshop, it blurs the texture. While this enhances it most of the time, if it's a small texture from far away you get a lot of degredation. Secondly, Interpolation should only be used when the texture map is close up. For example, I'm working on one you may have seen a couple of threads back. the wood on the floor's texture is like 25x25 pixels. Tiny, but since it goes all the way to the camera, I turned interpolation on, making it look like it was a bigger texture. However, YOUR texture looks good enough, since it is a good resolution; you don't have to turn on interpolation. As for your bump, this may sound simplistic, but it happens to me a lot, make sure you also pay attention to the slider bar underneath the GLOW channel. This looks like it was just thrown in, but it has a major effect on the Bump Amplitude. Hope that helps. I can't wait to see the new one! Peace, Hoborg

Just wanted to say I like the image. I get a sense of something about to happen like mugging or murder or Spawn is about to make an appearance. Is that your graffitti art? Also cool.

Yea - Bit, Sweet image.... Keep us updated! Clint

Thanks everyone! No matter what I tried it remained blurred so I had to change the position of the wall- that fixed it. Which makes me think it was a camera bug or something similar.Thanks again for all the help and comments. I'll keep you posted on the progress. Daf

Hiya Daf, I'd post an image but I have ablsolutly no extra time today. I'll post a little later. Place the texture into the Shininess channel and invert, into the Highlight channel (you may have to to invert it there too), and in the bump channel create an Operators>Multiply function and place the same texture map into both left and right. (if that's not enough, for each of the left and right channels create an Operator>multiply function and repeat the above step) Finally adjust the master bump control slider. I haven't tried it with this specific texture map but I've used this method on others. Mark

Hey thanks Mark! I'll try it later today when I open Carrara and let you know. Thanks! Daf

Hi again Daf, Here's a couple of tricks for photo-realistic textures: 1. Highlights: While the bump map is important for casting shadows, equally important is how the object reflects light. In the example above the highlight channel enhances the bump channel by 'deciding' what reflects light and what doesn't. Consequently, what sticks out further is now reflecting more light (especially the painted bricks) The gray scale image is required for variability in the light. While you can put the color image in, I used the grayscale image because the colored highlight caused by using a colored texture map didn't seem quite bright enough. 2. Shininess: There are areas that I do want to shine and areas that I don't (the mortar for example, it recedes visually if it's not reflecting light). Putting a color texture map in here just slows down the rendering process. The renderer is only looking for grayscale information. And besides, I want definate edges to the shininess. Additional Texture Maps: Creating some additional t-maps from the source color image is usally a good idea. It gives you excellent control over the variables on the surface. This, of course, is only a starting point. In the same way that I multiplied the two T-maps together in the bump channel, you can mix various T-maps or procedural textures to create completely believable surfaces. An article that I read with the folks that do the textures for Industrial Light and Magic indicated that they prefer to mix T-maps and procedural textures because the procedurals are pattern free and 'disguise' the patterns in the T-maps. Anyhow, hope that this helps. Mark

Hi MarkBremmer, This is great information on mixing T-Maps, where can we find the brick wall T-map? Any chance of posting it to the free stuff? Also a bigger screen capture of your settings panel would be helpful...:) Sorry to be so demanding, but the quality of your information is just to good to miss. Thanks for posting what you have...oops if I didn't say it already both the images posted here are really excellent! Tribe.

Awesome, Mark! Thanks a million! I know what I'll be doing the next couple of days!... Daf

Mark, without a doubt, you are the shader king. One of the most realistic brick walls I've seen this side of reality. You inspire me to dig deeper into shader territory. Just an observation - the champagne glasses look a little too bright for the light and draw my attention away from the palette.

okay Mark...I notice that you are using a rectangular layer on the wall- what is the advantage of that as opposed to just applying the texture maps parametrically or flat mapping? Also I notice that you are using 3 texture maps- brick 28, brick28highlity and brick28bump...what is the diffence between brick28highlity and brick28bump? They appear to have no color but I can't tell from your screenshot what the difference is. Also could you please explain why you are using 2 identical texture maps for the bump channel with the multiply operator? I am totally confused as to what that does. My Brick28 (from Carrara CD) is not as large as yours-in fact mine is half the size of yours- did you resize the texture maps if so is there an advantage to that- like less visible tiling? Thanks alot Mark- for taking the time to help us with this!! I really appreciate it! Daf

Thanks for the comments mclarsen. Yea, they're a little too bright. It's one of the those, "Hey, I think I'll post this image before I fall face first on the keyboard from exhaustion!" images. :) Daf, Good questions: 1. Rectangular layer: Yea, I usually create parametric maps so I can control brick/pattern quality on various faces more easily. Ever had some weird/unbelivable pattern wraps to your shapes? Me too. This way I can prevent them. 2. The Brick28 TMap is for color. The Brick25highlity (the 'Y' is on there because I can't type to save my life) is a grayscale image. Why? It's applied to the Shininess and Highligt channels to give the renderer information on how much light to 'reflect' and where to reflect it. In the Highlight, pure white reflects all the light. Gray (grey if your english) 'absorbs' half the light and black absorbs all of it. In the Shininess channel pure white is more 'glossy' looking; perfect for the painted portion of the bricks. The gray is sort of reflective and the black will look completely 'flat'. In real life, the mortar would reflect more than I'm allowing it to. However, I want it to go deep into the pattern and, combined with the bump channel, look like it recedes into the object. Two indentical bump maps multiplied; why? Well, as you've already noticed, deep bumps are a little hard to acheive; even when you crank up the master bump to 250 (I forgot how far up you can go in RayDream) And besides, I don't want to crank up the master bump too far because it will overemphasize the Noise procedural that I ended up adding to the left bump map channel for that 'pebbily' look. White comes out farthest and blace goes back farthest. That's why this is a black and white image. If I used a grayscale image instead of the black and white (or color), the bump wouldn't be as deep. When you multiply two images together the renderer 'sees' that as a deeper bump and casts better shadows without mucking around with the master bump control. 3. Brick28. Hmmmm. I don't think that I changes the resolution/size on mine. Your final image should determine the resolution, though. If you're final is going to be a screen resolution only and the camera isn't real close to the surface that has the texture, then lower res. is fine. If your final output is going to be a printed piece or your render camera is close to the object with the Tmap, then it will have to be a higher resolution to avoid pixelation. Size doesn't affect tiling. If it's a good map (left and right sides, top and bottom match) then tiling is invisible (no seams) with the exception of being able to distinguish a patterns. In the image above you'll notice that the lighting masks the pattern by hiding part of the wall and drawing your attention away from the wall. Mark

Ah-ha! Okay, thanks Mark! I appreciate the tips! I'll be back.... Thanks Daf