texturing a large exterior floor...

[angel]

Well, it really depends on what you are doing... is it for a game? is it for a still? or an animation?

If it is for games then it depends on the engine and how it handles terrain and materials. If it is just for an animation you can keep using tiling textures like usual, determine a good size for them and then layer them using alpha masks to hide the repeating pattern if it is too obvious.

The key for something like that is to have a base layer then build up the material with several different detail layers on top, this applies for the normal as well, don't try to cover the whole thing with just one single texture, you can even throw procedurals in there to mix it all up.

If it is for games then I can only advise on UE3, the principle is the same but the way you go about it in the editor is completely different.

[Lukeman]

First of all, I agree with SNoWs. It really depends on what you are doing. However, besides that, there some general techniques that can be applied in almost every situation through different techniques.

Based on the information provided, I should advice you to take advantage of the multiple UVmaps that are usually at your disposal. Be it in an offline rendering package like MAX o MAYA, or a realtime game engine, they most probably offer you a way of using different UV sets, with can be layered to provide richness and depth to your textures. In the same fashion, you could have a relatively low resolution ambient occlusion map that can be applied through some sort of compositing method (for example a composite map in MAX), untiled, by using different UV channels.

This way you can get great detailing by using a tilable pattern and, at the same time, apply variation layers and an ambient occlusion map.

Hope it helps!

[soulburn3d]

Here's a few tutorials that may help...

http://www.neilblevins.com/cg_education/tiled_floor/tiled_floor.htm
http://www.neilblevins.com/cg_education/tiling_trick/tiling_trick.htm

- Neil

[bonestructure]

Here's what I do, and mind you, it's just my way of doing things, right or wrong. In Max, I make a square plain. A large one, usually 1500 by 1500 or more. Then I set my render to the same size as the plane or whatever size I want a texture to be. I set safe frames in the front window, and match the plane to the safe frames so all I render is the plane, head on. Okay, then, in the material editor, I find whatever texture I want to tile. I usually use this to make blend materials, but it works just as good with tilers. Apply the material just as you would in your scene, with the texture tiled however many times it needs to be. Use bump or displace or whatever you would on your scene. You'll have to play with the tiling to get it right, but what else is new. Render it out and save it as a Tiff. Just my personal preference for textures. Once you have that rendered out and saved, you can then take it into photoshop and add grunge, vary the colors, the darks and lights, do whatever you need to do with it to make it look good. You will have to make new bump map and spec and all if need be, but I've found it a great way to make textures. I'm fairly known for making good textures, and this is the way i do a lot of them. For some reason, not many people seem to think of using Max to actually make textures, but it works quite well once you get the hang of it. Though, as I say, I generally use the blend material to make original textures.

[Eightball]

People, that is SUCH great help! Thanks a lot!

I'm sorry, I totally missed, that anyone answered. I usually have all of my threads on instant notification, looks like I missed this one. ;)

Now that you're saying that, it appears to be so obvious! I already layered textures using procedures before.
The problem with this one it, that I'll have a tiled floor (real tiles, not "tiled"... you know what I mean ^^) and I fear, that any layering will soon be very obvious...
Well, I'll still try it.

I also came up with maybe layering the occlusion on top by using Maya's projection nodes, that way I can layer textures without having to get new UV sets for every single one.
Anyone's got an idea on how to bake an occlusion map into the file applied to a projection node, other than into the color channel of the material?

Thanks so much for your replies! Great stuff!

Alex

p.s. it's real nice to know, that one can always count on you guys ;)

[Lukeman]

Hello again Eightball!
With regards to your reply there are some thing I thought would be useful to you.

The problem with this one it, that I'll have a tiled floor (real tiles, not "tiled"... you know what I mean ^^) and I fear, that any layering will soon be very obvious...
Provided that you have "real tiles", take for example a tile floor, you should use layering to provide very subtle variations, which added to bump maps and an ambient occlussion map would resolve that obviousness pretty quick. I think the links provided by Neil Blevins are a great start to solve this problem. However, you should adapt it to your needs. You could for example have two tiles which are almost identical but with a slight color variation, and layer them by using some procedural like noise through an intiled UV channel.

Anyone's got an idea on how to bake an occlusion map into the file applied to a projection node, other than into the color channel of the material?
I think you should export your camera render channels' ambient occlusion output and align your projection node with that camera's view. Nevertheless, you have to consider that projected maps are high view dependant and won't tolerate extreme viewpoint changes. Maybe it would be better to unwrap the objects and bake the occlusion map to their UVs, otherwise you should output an occlussion map fron a different projection node for each different view, which can be very tedious, and would render itself useless in case of animations.

Hope this is of any help to you!

Lucas

[Eightball]

Thank you for your ideas!

The idea of layering the same texture, only with a color variation is real great! I think I can use that. Thanks for that!

About the projection issue:
I didn't mean camera projections, which would, as you said, depend on the view. I meant mayas projection nodes, which work just like planar (or any other) UV projection, but can be moved around inside of your scene. It's kinda hard to explain, but they make the position of the applied texture depend on the position of the node, rather than on the UV layout. As I said,... hard to explain ^^

The concept works pretty neatly, already tried that, only I have to build the whole shader node by node, which is a lot of work and I hoped for some easier way to do that.

Thanks again, any more ideas are very welcome!

Alex

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