topic Re: Material - Can anyone figure out how they did this? in 3ds Max Forum

Material - Can anyone figure out how they did this?

darawork — Fri, 21 Jul 2017 16:29:48 GMT

Hi,

I'm trying to work out how this was made. It's a stretch of concrete tiles, applied to a box that has been edited with an edit poly modifier. How did they get the random tiling of the material without using material #IDs, using a single material and no UVW mapping?

The material is a VrayMtl, but that's not really the important part (I think?)

There is something done to the box with the Edit Poly modifier that I can't figure out.

Re: Material - Can anyone figure out how they did this?

RGhost77 — Fri, 21 Jul 2017 19:05:35 GMT

Why you say "no UVs"? All tiles UVs has random position and rotation over one bitmap.

Re: Material - Can anyone figure out how they did this?

darawork — Fri, 21 Jul 2017 19:56:43 GMT

Thanks for the reply, but all I can see is a collapsed stack.
Can you see the UVWs somewhere else, in the Edit-Poly Modifier?
Everything has an #ID of 3 in materials.

Enlighten me.
With pictures.

I've only been using vRay for around two months.
I was with iRay before. And besides that, I haven't learnt the full interface yet.
Albeit twenty something years since I 1st launched.

And the attached material scene is some godlike low-poly texturing.
I am honestly intrigued.

Re: Material - Can anyone figure out how they did this?

Alfred.DeFlaminis — Fri, 21 Jul 2017 21:56:20 GMT

Hello @darawork,

Each face has a randomized UV space in the unwrap. If you put an unwrap on it, it's a solid mass of overlapping UV islands. My guess is that faces were selected at random and a mapping was applied, then those faces hidden after a stack collapse. Then, select faces at random and another UV mapping. Collapse, hide, select, map... etc.

Or, each face had it's own mapping (UV Map set to face maybe) then they were packed and then randomized with a script or utility in the 1:1 Uv square. This whole trick is just overlapping uvs, imho. Old school games trick. Because the small square mappings are randomly placed, it looks like a random pattern. The work here is randomizing them in the 1:1 square. Honestly a script could do it in a second, but I don't know of one off hand.

Another method with Vray would be to use a couple different textures and a Multisubtex. Or the same texture but rotated 4 different directions with Multisubtex.

EDIT: Clarity.

Best Regards,

Re: Material - Can anyone figure out how they did this?

darawork — Fri, 21 Jul 2017 21:58:13 GMT

/Goes for a wander over on Scritspot. Nice weather for it. As I thought, collapsed stack stuff. Prescription.

Re: Material - Can anyone figure out how they did this?

Alfred.DeFlaminis — Fri, 21 Jul 2017 22:13:35 GMT

Ok, best method to make this in my opinion:

1) UV map whole object at once, top down with a square mapping. It's full of separated elements on the model level so each will be it's own island.

2) Scale the mapping to the right size for the texture in the UV Mapping modifier.

3) Randomize UV Island placement in the unwrap using a script, plugin, utility, casting of bones, whatever. Maybe randomize rotations on them in 90 degree increments too for extra umph.

1 Texture and 1 material. 🙂

Best Regards,

Re: Material - Can anyone figure out how they did this?

Alfred.DeFlaminis — Fri, 21 Jul 2017 22:23:57 GMT

How I'd approach it:

1) UV map whole object at once, top down with a square mapping. It's full of separated elements on the model level so each will be its own island.

2) Scale the mapping to the right size for the texture in the UV Mapping modifier.

3) Randomize UV Island placement in the unwrap using a script, plugin, utility, casting of bones, whatever. Maybe randomize rotations on them in 90 degree increments too for extra umph.

If I wanted to really show off implementing this in a project with outdoor hand laid bricks I might do the following in addition:

4) Detach all the squares to separate elements. (I use the subdivision reversion script, it has a detach function I use for all kinds of things but there are free scripts out there too.)

5) Fire up Soulburn scripts and use the transform randomizer to rotate each script a degree or two in random xyz, or the Edit->Transform Toolbox in Max.

6) Reattach them all. Reflections will look less uniform now because the angles are slightly different. I try not to overdo it, but a little bit goes a long way.

I used it in a simple project I did for a friend who was visualizing some tiles for a candy shop he was designing. (Along with the UV trick above.) You can see the somewhat broken reflections at the various tile intersections. I rotated some of the UV's island 90 degrees for extra randomization. (I'll edit my post above to add that.)

EDIT: Grammar. I got excited there, man I love rendering. Also added steps from previous post.

Best Regards,

Re: Material - Can anyone figure out how they did this?

darawork — Fri, 21 Jul 2017 22:20:31 GMT

Preliminary solution accepted.
Until Max reboots. 😃