A brick wall.....
polycounter lvl 10
Well, okay, not the most exciting of objects but I've been looking at some of the env tutorials on polycount, and thought I'd have a go at making a brick wall from scratch as a learning exercise - making the bricks in zBrush, baking out the maps in xNormal and painting the diffuse in photoshop.
I also came across Xoliul's shader and thought I'd have a go with that as well. The texture is tiled twice across the object. I've been staring at this thing for so long I think I've lost perspective on it a bit. Any comments welcome - even though it's only a wall
I also came across Xoliul's shader and thought I'd have a go with that as well. The texture is tiled twice across the object. I've been staring at this thing for so long I think I've lost perspective on it a bit. Any comments welcome - even though it's only a wall
Replies
A few crits;
Firstly, bricks are not that smooth. Even new bricks would have some surface texture and little chips in. You've got the geometry bake nice so I'd run a noisier version or a brick phototexture through CrazyBump or similar and blend it with the baked normals. Only slightly though don't go too crazy
Secondly, the bricks on the edges don't correspond with the bricks on the front. For example, on the brick courses where the brick is laid lengthways across the front, you would see the narrower face of it on the edge of the wall. It looks like you can possibly shift the end face UVs up or down a single course so they line up correctly. If that makes sense.
It depends how realistic you want to get with this, and whether the end face would be seen. But the bond you've made (the way the bricks are laid) works ok for the front face but you'd want to arrange them differently for the end faces of the wall.
And lastly, why is your wall 27 polys? It should be 6 surely? Or less if you delete faces that wont be visible to the viewer such as the bottom one.
creationtwentytwo, Av7xrocker97: I think I lost some of the detail on the bricks along the way during the bake. I'm actually using photo ref to base the bricks on and in this case they are actually quite smooth, but you're right they do look a little too smooth in the shots, and I'll try break up the surfaces a bit more by overlaying another normal map in crazybump.
Ignore the poly count, I only turned that on to show that it wasn't some high-res model. I was being a bit lazy, I should have tidied it up though - along with the texture UV's on the corner not corresponding.
Pbcrazy: Yeah, they do look kinda metallic I guess. I think my spec map might be a bit off, I'll try and adjust it and hopefully reduce this effect.
Cheers
Yep, that happens. You almost always have to exaggerate and over state the details to get them to make it all the way through the process. It also helps to think "what if I had to render this at a lower resolution" because that happens all the time. One of the first things to get cut are the highest levels of texture resolutions, when they're looking to trim disc space or streamline bottle necks. Sometimes you have to think multi-platform also which could mean juggling a few different texture resolutions.
Looking good, nice work! Keep it up!
Thanks Vig and thanks for the tip
as it is the bricks could be more interesting even keeping the style (ie new) slight differences in mortar thickness and angle of each brick could be exagertaed to give a much more dynamic normal map and interesting pattern...
with Too clean patterns like this....it may be based on reality...but it ends up looking to CG
Yeah, the bricks do look too precise in terms of how they have been laid and lack the more human inaccuracies you'd expect. I might try and shift the bricks slightly to achieve what you're referring to. Cheers
This seems like a good base to add dirt and detail too which can be done through shaders overlays or alternate textures which is something you might do in the editor. It can be hard to get dirt and detail out of a texture so it might be a touch more versatile as is? But then again if you really don't need it to be versatile then why waste shader instructions making it into what you need...
It might be a good exercise to create alternate versions from this, since that is pretty common too. Keeping the details on separate layers and models.
Maybe a ground floor version with dirt and gunk collecting where it meets the ground?
Maybe a roughed up version?
Maybe some crown molding trim detail at the top?
Water streaks and dusty grime overlays?
Or call it done and move onto other things =P
I've combined another normal map with the original to try and break up the surfaces of the bricks more. I've also added a bit more grime to the diffuse and adjusted the levels to try and get a bit more variation throughout the brick. Haven't shifted the bricks about yet.
I included the old texture on the block on the right for comparison.
I'm actually doing this for a building I want to make and there are about three different types of brick that I want to include, so perhaps I should maybe get on with that now. Using this as the basis for those brick variations is what I had sort of intended from the start, but I hadn't considered some of the other options you've mentioned there so I'll keep those in mind - cheers
Edit: Actually, looking at the block on the left I'm not so sure how well that will tile now - doh!