(Based upon a "3D Artist" article by Alex Lindsey)
The idea was that he wanted to make a whole wall made of individual blocks (or slabs, if You like) of stone, and they had to be _very_ detailed because that's what his customer had ordered.
The "how-to" was written for Form-Z
on the Macintosh (yurk, spit!) but the technique proved to be apliquable (pun)
on Imagine as well. And here it is:
- Start up a (new if You like) project
- Go to the Detail Editor
- Add a primitive plane (200, 150, 1, 1) and pick it
- Zoom the perspective view so that the plane covers the
whole view
- In attributes, add the Clouds texture with default settings
- Quickrender, this will take _quite_ a while
- Save the quickrender somewhere
- Delete the plane
- Add a new plane (200, 150, 20, 15) and pick it
- Go to Pick Points mode and select pick method Drag Box
- While holding the shift key drag a box around all points but
those at the outmost edges of the plane
- Translate the picked points -10 units in Y
- In the top right and low left corner will be a couple of
polygons that will still lie flat along the original position.
If You like (and I personally did) You can delete the edges
that are lying flat and add two new (correctly oriented) faces
in each corner
- Go to Pick Groups or Pick Objects mode
- Select the Applique function, and use the cloud quickrender
that You saved just a little while ago
- In the applique requester select transform axes, Translate the
brush +5 units in X and Z. Size it 10 units smaller than the
original values in X and Z
- Accept these settings and wait for the plane to be appliqued.
If You are not satisfied with the result you can always "undo"
it and applique it all over again using another Y size for the
brush
- Now You should have the basic shape of a rough cut rock block
To make it all really _look_ like a rock block
you will have to colour it rockily (maybe using the concrete texture or - as
the guy who wrote the article - a colour cycled and filtered version of
the clouds brush) and You will also need to use a good bump map to simulate
the grains and pores in the rock's surface.
I tried to use the leather texture to simulate the
pores but that was no hit, I can tell You.
What I _can_ tell You is that Alex L.
managed to produce some _very_ realistic rock blocks using this method, and
given some time to experiment with this technique I am sure that I will be able
to do so too.
The exact same teqnique could be used for
making a basic landscape. I still haven't tried that, but I will (when I
can find the time...). Perhaps using the Mountain Top texture... hmmm...
------------------------------
... Please Return to News ...
... Please Return to Index ...
------------------------------