3D TUTORIAL
25-07-2001

BRICK AND MORTAR BUSINESS PLAN A tutorial by his Majesty Myself Description This simple tutorial will explain how to do a modest but efficient building coated with a nice bricks material. You will have a bit of modeling, a bit of lighting, and a bit of texturing.

TUTORIAL : First of all, just do the usual cylinder with the parameters indicated on [figure 1] [figure 1] [figure 2] Add an FFD modifier and tweak the shape a bit [figure 2] Raise the height segments to 10, add an EDIT MESH modifier, and select the top vertices.. [figure 3] [figure 3] [figure 4] Move the selected vertices close to the next set of vertices as indicated by the red arrow, this will round the top edge a little bit. [figure 4] Next, let's grab the materials editor ..pick a blank sphere, and add a BRICKS map in the diffuse slot change the default bricks setup to "STACK BOND".Create another bricks map in the bump slot, i said CREAT, do noit coipy, there's a slight bug when you do that that will ruin the rest of the tut if you do that, so just CREATE ..thanx. select "stack bond" too and change the colours so you have WHITE bricks and BLACK mortar. You should have this now : [figure 6] Ok, collapse the object to editable mesh, add some UVWs , cylindrical type, and don't forget to click on "FIT". Tile the coordinates to 5 in U, and 8 in V . [figure 6] Add an extruded circle under the object, then add a free spot as shown on [figure 7], casting shadow, with shadow map size at 256.Move the pivot point of the spot at the exact center of the scene. [figure 7] [figure 8] Instance the spot so you have a light dome of something like 70 lights as shown on [figure 8], lower down the light muliplier to 0,03, and give it a slight blueish colour ( it's supposed to be the skylight )... add a big spot with multiplier 1, casting raytraced shadows , contrast 60, softened edges 20 ...and render ! [figure 9] [figure 9] Cool, next time we'll begin adjusting the materials and the lights to have a cool scene, and it's going to be some work !! [figure 10] Ok, let's go on withn the Tut, grab a camera and take a close picture of the object like on [figure 10] Serious, grab the material editor, in the bricks material we created ( RENAME IT BRICKS ), click on the "Standard Button", select "BLEND", and answer "Keep old material as sub-material", you should get what's on [figure 11] [figure 11] [figure 12] now the goal is to make a bit of natural dirt on the bricks.In the MASK map of the blend material, add a BRICKS material, and reset it to "stack bond". bricks colour should be black, and mortar should be white. in the #2 material of the main blend, change the main colour to black, so we can see what we're doing. Now you can see that the mortar part is black..that's cool.see [figure 12] Change the horiz/vert gap in the mask to 1,5.Now you should see the mortar bigger.there is a setting called "Rough"...enter a value of 20 in there.aaaah now we have something interesting...a black layer of crap on the bricks hehehe...well we're not finished yet..see [figure 13] [figure 13] [figure 14] In the Dirt map , which is the 2nd material in the blend, in the diffuse slot, grab a MIX map. in the first mix slot, enter a NOISE map, in the second slot, a DENT map, and another NOISE map in the MIX AMOUNT map in the first mix slot, the noise settings are [ Fractal | size 5 | high threshold 0,7 | low threshold 0,3 | color #1 178 178 178 | color #2 106 106 106 ] in the second mix slot, the dend map settings are [ size 20 | color #1 156 156 156 ] in the amount mix slot, the noise settings are [ turbulence | high threshold 0,5 | low threshold 0 | size 25 ] in the BUMP slot of the dirt material, grab an instance of the bump map used in the main bricks material. ...see [figure 14] Let's zoom in and render and see what we have so far [figure 15] [figure 15] [figure 16] Ok, what now...mmmm let's add a secondary layer of crap for the whole building.Include the current full material in another blend, like we did with the bricks material. in the Blend Mask, add a NOISE map , high threshold at 0,7 and low at 0,3 fractal type and size at 5, stretch it a little raising the Y tiling at 2 . Set the 2nd material color to black so we can see what we're doing, and grab an instance of the bricks BUMP map in the bump slot... you should have something ugly like in[figure 16] Tone down the dirt map bu changing the #2 color of the blend mask to [100 100 100 ] grab a COPY ( not an instance ) of the diffuse mix dirt map we used before in the diffuse slot of the crap map, and change the noise & dent colours to darker tones, change the noise size to 15, and the dent size to 40... you should have this [figure 17] [figure 17] Ok guys, we're all about done with the Crap stuff ( hehehe ), now we're going to arrange the main bricks material ...follow me please ! [figure 18] Let's go down to the main bricks diffuse material that's right now a simple stack bond bricks thingy...as you can see you can replace the colours by MAPS..that's what we're gonna do. in the bricks map slot, add a fratcal noise map with a size of 1 and dark orange/red colours you should have this [figure 18] now, in this very same bricks material, lower the glossiness at 0, add a specular map, that is a fractal NOISE map, size 1, spec map amount at 50%. In the upper dirt map in the upper blend, copy the diffuse dirt slot in the spec level slot, and set the amount at 50%... you should have this [figure 19] [figure 19] [figure 20] The only thing left now is to go to the rendering options, change the anti aliasing filter to "Catmull Rom" and render again... [figure 20] Thank you for your attention guys.