This is a WIP, created in the spline modeler from an imported set of arch lines placed perpendicular to each other. I am going for a sewer/catacomb look- not sure what will be added later- but for now I am not exactly happy with the shader and would like some imput. Thanks!

I like it.. can almost smell it from here... my first impression was that the mortar looks too clean and I don't know how you got that shader tree set up, but I would think that the bricks should be bumpier than the mortar. but who am I to say... looks pretty damn good

I like it. How about some garbage floating around, like driftwood or perhaps a catwalk or staris.. You could even add some glows from underneath the water either to simulate a toxic glow or some flood lights or something... Lots of possabilities with this one... Paul

Arches need to have a separate row of bricks defining the curve- usually turned 90 degrees from the ones in the wall part, so you see their ends. . . then make the thickness of the wall equal to one brick length. . . does that make sense? The way you have it would be both difficult to build and weak- which may be what bothers you about the shader- it doesn't match what an arch looks like in reality. Also you have some bent bricks in the corners- really only noticeable in the closest one. Bricks might be a bit large- what scale are you going for? Markd

There should be a a fairly thick dark line to indicate where the water meets the bricks. Keith

Mr. P, you've got a great start. Feel free to tell me to "get a life" but I love doing this environmental/shader kind of stuff... Total start to finish time on this file was about 35 minutes. Like you, these shapes are just two spline created in Carrara and then duplicated. The texturing was pretty quick on these. I used (shameless plug) the MBGrooves shaders of Bricks1 for the wall and Stone1 for the portal. Here's where I made texture changes though. Eric Winemiller has a cool little tool called Shader Ops. It was instrumental in creating the "water line". Really easy. The original bricks shader was duplicated. Then the S.O. Brighten function was used to wash out the bricks. Those two shaders were then combined with the Multi-channel Mixer option. The same was repeated for the stone arch. I also added some green grunge to the original Bricks shader with a mixer function and simple colors for that pleasant mildew look. The other little tweak was to apply Anything Grooves (also by Eric W.) only the closest brick walls. (The MBGrooves has a special shader for that included with the regular texture maps) It just adds an extra dimension to the surfaces which easily adds complexity to a scene. I'll typically spend more time texturing and lighting a scene than modeling because good textures and lights can disguise simple models pretty effectively. Plus they render faster than high poly models. Hope this helps...(hey it's Friday. I had to do something besides work today) Mark

Great idea and image! But I don't see how you did it in the spline modeller. Mind posting a screen cap of the spline?

I drew a series of arshes in windows draw and saved as an ai file. imported the first into the main plane and then re imported it as a sweep path into the right pane. It is a very simple shape and I plan on making a mor complex profile later. I tried to import into the VM and use subdivision to smooth the poles into cilinders but it did not work. I also need to go back and make a separate arch like Eric did so the arch stones will work better. Having fun with this shader, I want to get a separate bump chanel going for the green moss but does not seem to work and now I have so many mixers I am loosing track. Also, I added some slope to get the dark water line, but it seems to project straingly- perhapse if i convert to a Vertex mesh and box map? hmmm... This is a shot of the arches in the spline modeler

Sorry- like Marks, not Eric.. (Eric's shader/plugin, Mark's arch) my head hurts... Thanks for all the Imput everyone! I will post the next pick later tonight (I hope) Andrew