Making a custom 3d tile on a curved wall...

[kehlje]

Hi forum,

I am trying to figure out the best way to tile the attached map onto the curved facade of a building I'm visualizing. The map is flat but the tiles will be 3 dimensional.

I know I can use this map and make displacement maps that should give it the depth it needs... but would I be better served by investing in something like mighty tile or wall and tile plugin to do it? Or railclone? I'm wondering if the result will be better if I can array the 3d tiles along the curved facade and also get some variation from one of these plugins, but I don't know if they can do curved walls. It doesn't seem like it but I'm not sure -- I've been googling for 5-10 minutes and looking on their webpages but all I see are flat walls.

Thanks in advance for your thoughts!

[-Ben-Battler-]

I would model the smallest tileable sector of the thing and render a ZDepth pass of it for getting a perfect displacement map.
Then you still can apply diff/refl/bump textures using a different UVW Channel.

[kehlje]

Hi Ben, thanks for your response -- I'll try this. One thing however -- for the life of me I can't figure out how to do multiple UVW maps with different channels on an object. I see the place to change the channel in the uvw map modifier, but I can't assign more than one material to the object. What do I do in my material editor in order to apply multiple uvw maps to one object?

[oncire]

you can do mutiple channel in one object...material>bitmap>map channel>...then apply uvw map modifier and change the value of "map channel" with same value as the bitmap. 

ex.bitmap: map channel = 3 , uvw map: map channel = 3... and so on

[-Ben-Battler-]

Exactly, it is bitmap dependend not material dependend. So you only have to assign 1 material. :)

[romullus]

If you going to model one segment then you can dismiss displacement altogether. Google for a slideknit script and with the help of it you'll can have clean geometry.

[-Ben-Battler-]

If you going to model one segment then you can dismiss displacement altogether. Google for a slideknit script and with the help of it you'll can have clean geometry.

Wow, even better.

[agentdark45]

If you going to model one segment then you can dismiss displacement altogether. Google for a slideknit script and with the help of it you'll can have clean geometry.

Amazing, I need to learn how to do this!

[CiroC]

If you going to model one segment then you can dismiss displacement altogether. Google for a slideknit script and with the help of it you'll can have clean geometry.

Amazing, I need to learn how to do this!

https://simonfuchs.wordpress.com/2014/08/17/tutorial-adding-detail-to-your-highpoly-objects-using-the-slideknit-script/

Here you have

[Malor]

I have to add, that it's still worth investing in Rail Clone. I personally run into small things like this all the time and while there is always a script or to that can help, RC has a lot of those tiny useful functions in one piece of software.