Help with brick shader.

First I have to confess that I'm a complete material room dunce, and need things to be spelled out with all the i's dotted and the t's crossed. I made a brick shader, based on the Poser Brick node, and applying it to a Poser box. With the box at at 100% scale everything looked good. Now if I scale the box up to 1000%, I need to scale the brick size down to something that looks realistic. I thought that would be easy, but I'm not finding it so. I used a Math_Function with Multiply to set the size of the bricks, and note that the Bump value is negative to make the lighter mortar recess.

I'm having at least two problems. One, the native Brick Turbulence seems to be scaling up, even though it's not connected to the math node, making the bricks too wavy. And two, it seems that the bump strength needs to scale up in proportion to brick size, but I am not sure how to link that to the Math node.

Perhaps I'm just tackling this in a completely wrong way, but I can't think of a better way. Any suggestions?

Screen shot of shader to follow in next post...

Here is the text of the mt5.

Huh. I don't use this node much. I am not instantly able to describe the turbulence size relative to the brick size. Perhaps it needs to be scaled like them.

Going out to dinner - back later.

Doh! I'm an idiot! I think I just need to connect the native brick turbulance to the Math node! Poser chashed, I need to reboot before I can check that. But I still can't figure out how to link the strength of the Bump to the Math node. Is that even possible?

Yes connecting the brick turbulence to the Math fixed one problem.

As for the bump: Click on the small key-icon left to the bump-input and select "animated". This will give you a channel in the object's properties you can then use with dependent parameters.

Not the scale of the prop - the scale of the brick.

When you need more bricks, to cover a scaled up box, you scale down each brick. But the turbulence doesn't scale down with it. The mortar width does, and so you don't have to touch that. But you do have to reduce the scale of the turbulence.

In the shaders, the Brick node scale is adjusted so the larger box has more bricks.

But it also has more turbulence.

How confusing.

My math node is set up as a divide. I enter the scale of the prop in Value_2 and thus it divides by the scale (%) that matches the scale of the prop.

You can actually set this up as a dependent parameter if you like.

Notice I do not use the brick for color.

If you try to put color in it, then you have trouble using it for bump.

Separating my concern for color into that Blender node, I can adjust color and this will have no accidental influence on the bump.

Quote - But I still can't figure out how to link the strength of the Bump to the Math node. Is that even possible?

It is possible but wrong.

The depth of a brick remains the same no matter how many you need.

You're changing the scale of the brick pattern so you can make more bricks on a larger prop, and less bricks on a smaller prop. That's all you're doing - because you need more or fewer bricks.

But regardless of how many you need, the depth of the mortar should be, and already is, the same everywhere. Therefore, you have it backwards. You do not want to alter the bump depth. You want it the same.

The only problem you had with bump was that you tied it to color. In my arrangement, the brick node's color is 0 to 1, always. It therefore produces a consistent height when used as a height field, either for bump or displacement.

Notice also that I used black (0) for mortar, white (1) for brick.

This makes things more sensible. The brick is raised. The brick needs a greater height. A height map uses white (1) to indicate the highest point. It uses black (0) to indicate the lowest point.

By setting my brick node up consistent with a height map, I don't have to work with negative multipliers.

BB, thanks for your help with the bricks.

This is where I'm at after a bit of tweaking.