Bathroom Tiles
polycounter lvl 11
I know I know, when you read the title you probably went to the wiki preparing to copy and paste the Bathroom tiles tutorial link.
Anyway, I'm sorry if this may seem like a really dumb question, but I'm just trying to learn here![:\](https://polycount.com/plugins/emojiextender/emoji/twitter/confused.png ":\")
. Reading the bathroom tiles tut, it tells me to place a grout plane and a bake plane. Now I'm assuming they are just regular planes, and I know how to place them, but just for future reference purposes, what EXACTLY are they for, and what would happen if I didn't place them.
Anyway, I'm sorry if this may seem like a really dumb question, but I'm just trying to learn here
. Reading the bathroom tiles tut, it tells me to place a grout plane and a bake plane. Now I'm assuming they are just regular planes, and I know how to place them, but just for future reference purposes, what EXACTLY are they for, and what would happen if I didn't place them.
Replies
Basically the bake plane is like a "camera" that will render out a texture from what it "sees" onto the UV coordinates it has set. You don't have to use a plane but for a normal flat tiling texture you'd be using a square plane.
The grout plane is just so there's actually something inbetween the tiles. If you are just rendering a normal map then you don't really need it since most renderers will fill in the gaps with the right normal color for flat objects. Uh... but I wouldn't make it a habit to skimp out on things that take you 10s to put in
Just to add: For grout (the white adhesive you see between bathroom tiles), all you really need is a plane (or strips) as big, or slightly bigger, than the area you're trying to bake into your texture. Maybe apply a bit of noise bump to it, either with a procedural material (if your app has them), or with a quick noise texture, just to add some slight surface variation.
And yea I figured the grout plane had something to do with that. So should the tiles and the grout plane be one object? Thanks for the responses by the way. = )
Its very hard to see.
This is on a flat plane by the way.
There are just some issues with the normal I found. Should I just re render and see if they are still there?
Because this is a tiling bitmap, it is better to render only a 3x3 or 4x4 grid of high-res ceramic tiles, and make that into a tiling map. That way you have more pixels for each ceramic tile.
Edit... in okkun's tutorial, he hasn't set up his bake plane properly. At least, not properly enough to make a tiling normal map.
I'm trying to get my tiles as good as Jordan Walker's are on his bath house. I know it's gonna take practice but that's what I'm aiming for.
@Eric Alright I'll try that. I did notice in Jordans material set up there were just 4 tiles so I'll see how that goes.
@Max I don't quit get what your saying. I'll try it though, I'll make a flat plane that will be my grout, then in between the tiles ill add some edges and just bring them down a little bit. Well see how that goes.
Thanks so much guys I hope I can get this right.
If the sides of your grout trench are not sloped you run the risk of not capturing the sides and the normal map comes out flat or just captures a few pixels. It also helps if you bevel the edges of your tiles a bit to help capture that change in angle.
When the projection rays hit the surface its looking for angled differences, not necessarily height. The slope in the sides is what helps capture the depth.
This height oversight in the projection rays, is what allows you use floating geometry and saves you from having to heavily edit your high poly mesh for tiny details. These floaters need that parallel lip so they blend into the surface and render smoothly.
The tutorial is actually very good. It's just not a tutorial about making a tiling texture, it's a tutorial about making a great normal map for bathroom tiles.
You used a skylight to generate a normal map? That doesn't make sense.
There are many ways to create ambient occlusion, which can be a good addition to your diffuse texture. Bathroom tiles wouldn't use much in the way of occlusion though, too shallow.
Also like Eric pointed out the tutorial doesn't really address tiling, but there are a few ways to fix that. One being on the model itself and the next being to fix it in photoshop or run it through bitmap2material which "could" fix the tiling for you (or make a mess).
I would opt to fix it on the model, I would tile the mesh around the edges using the symmetry modifier that is offset to tile instead of slice/mirror. And make any adjustments I needed to make to the seam, tile the mesh one more time, and bake only the center tile with all the other tiles in place.
Also it helps to exaggerate the depth of your tiles and roundness (and slope) of the tiles. For example when making a tile I would put a Taper modifier on it to give the tile a slight pyramid shape, before duplicating it around. That way you get a nice rounded edge and a good slope with good depth.
I made a master material, so what you see is close to what I'm going to have on the floor of my envioronment. I just need to learn to vertex painting crap to change it up.
Heres the material. I just tried to make it as close to Jordan W's because I liked his results and what you can do with the material. I made the texture from a photo from CG Textures.
The original isn't actually used in the actual material, I just wanted to show the difference between that and the diffuse. I just clone stamped the tiles to clear out all those cracks in my diffuse then desaturated it.
This is the biggest reason why it's so dead and lifeless. You need wear and tear!
so i made this a few weeks ago for some people in my one of my classes. I know youve got a material down but you might be interested. its no big deal and its not really supposed to even be a tutorial but i thought i would share :P (Y)
Because it's all just gray... the grout and the tiles. The tiles are also all the same color. I'm comparing yours with your inspiration... Jordan's tiles.
dreadsnipa's tiles have some nice color variation, and the grout is a different color than the tiles (same thing with Jordan's grout).
Hard to crit with just the normal map & spec map.
Here are some stuff you should read up on:
http://www.chrisalbeluhn.com/UDK_Asset_Position_Offsets_Texturet_Tutorial.html
http://www.chrisalbeluhn.com/UT3_Add_variation_to_repeating_textures_Tutorial.html
For the Spec, do a high pass from unclean textures which have scratches, dent's, and fingerprints on them.
Add detail map to the normal.
haha guess was thinking to myself why would anyone touch the floor then realized it :P
Oh you...
Probably gonna start building my scene with some assets. Then adjust the tiles with some vertex painting and stuff. and make it dirty in specific areas.
The edges of your tiles look like they flatten out, but real tiles don't do this. That should be grout instead.
If the wall is going to be that damaged, the floor will be damaged as well. Default wall texture I guess. But showing that you can make damaged assets is a good thing to have in a portfolio piece.
The lowest part of the tile in the grout trench is catching a lot of light for some weird reason, not sure why that is, but its throwing things off. Normally you want some gunk and AO where the tile meets the grout.
I think your high poly model needs to be roughed up a bit, wear down some of the sharper edges like the corners and maybe even sub-divide them a few times and add a noise modifier to give the surface of each tile a bit more character. Once you get the high poly rockin along you can use it to bake out some AO and cavity maps that will help you push your spec map over the top.
To help show age in the overall building messing up the straight lines of a tile floor is a great way to go. It doesn't have to be drastic but some famous examples like the floor in Ratatouille come to mind.
It can also help to change the hue/sat on a few tiles like they are newer or older. This shows some upkeep was done at some point and just adds another layer of history to your scene.
Also depending on how complex you want to make your floor mesh and how complex you want to make the material/shader you could add even more randomized damage like missing tiles or grunge/damage that tiles differently than floor tile does so it repeats less often.