PDA

View Full Version : MR instanced shingles on a roof?

rygoody
08-24-2006, 02:55 PM
Putting shingles on the roof of a house is somewhat unnecessarily time consuming. I was thinking it'd be sweet if there was a mental ray geometry type shader of some sort where you could plug in an object, like a shingle, and then it would distribute it on the surface based on the UV coordinates. So it would place one shingle on the surface every .1 or whatever specificed uv coordinates apart. I guess sort of like how in half life 2 or unreal 2 engines where you can assign grass models to be randomly distributed on a texture, but have the option for it to be in patterns so you can use it for more than just grass.

anyways, does anything like this already exist?
Pixero
08-24-2006, 09:05 PM
You could try my DarkTree Roof shader with MentalRay. :)
The image shows a one polygon plane with the DarkTree procedural Roof shader and displacement.

http://www.pixero.com/bilder/downloads/old_roof_with_dirt_and_lichen.jpg

Download and read the descriptions on how to set it up here:
http://www.pixero.com/downloads_darktree.html
rygoody
08-25-2006, 01:03 AM
Thank you, I will give it a try.

But I was hoping for a method that creates actual geometry instances because I think this would be faster than displacement wouldn't it? Also I thought it'd look nice to have the shingles overhang the bounds of the surfaces that spawns them a little bit, which would only happen the surface spawned instanced geometry on it... I feel like I'm gonna have to make my attempt to dive in the mental ray shader writing world into order to get such a shader.
CGTalk Moderation
08-25-2006, 01:03 AM
This thread has been automatically closed as it remained inactive for 12 months. If you wish to continue the discussion, please create a new thread in the appropriate forum.