Modular Building-Help on tiling bricks

salacious_Crumb

So I've started making a modern modular building. Seems like a must have piece for a portfolio according to the agencies I speak to. I have a pretty good idea how to go about it. One thing worries me though, and thats which way to do the detail work- mainly the bricks.

So I made a modular window section and I need to make a brick texture. Whats the best way to go about it?

1. Do I create a ton of lowpoly bricks (plus the other details like the trim around the window), take these into zbrush and detail, bring back to maya, make them tilable (so that the red bricks are the same for the wrap) and bake these on to the lowpoly model? (will the polycount be too high for my pc to handle?) Or bake in xnormal?



2. or do I create a tilable brick texture and normal map that I then apply to the modular piece in photoshop? How do I make sure it tiles nicely if the modular piece only takes up, say, a third of the UV space as it shares it with other assets? And what do I do with the brick texture where it meets the concrete trim around the window? Do I bake that out seperately and then lay it over the top in photoshop?

I dont want multiple texture sheets/materials on the same asset. I want one texture sheet. Does that make sense?

Sorry if this sounds a bit stupid. I'm not asking how to model things as such. More the way in which you would go about it. The pipeline if you like.

passerby

both options will work personally i would do the the first and bake out normals and AO in xnormal.

but if maya cant handle the high poly brick from zbrush to to decimate them a bit in meshlab first.

here is some info on that http://www.brameulaers.com/tutorials/optimisation_workflow_tutorial/optimisation_workflow_tutorial.html

if you can set all your pieces up that have brick to warp fine like that i think method 1 will work good.

a other option is to make a wall of those bricks and bake it down to a plane and put the texture where you need it in photoshop.

Mark Dygert

Personally its easier for me to go get it to tile in photoshop by using a tileable brick texture and carefully unwrapping the module. I would be VERY careful with how much unique detail you put into it because it is going to repeat often. There are enough ways to get grunge and damage on separate instances without having to put it on every one.

eyo

I agree with Mark on this one, you really need to be conscious of how much it is going to be tiled and how large it is going to be on screen, then you will know how much detail you need. I tend to make most of my brick textures in P/S. If it is something more custom with a window in it etc I will create a heightmap in P/S and then displace that onto a plane in ZB and sculpt it up from there. Hope that helps.

Andrew Mackie

I've had the same questions before about how to do this, or the "correct" pipeline. I'd love to see your updates and how you go about doing this.