Arched Brick Surrounds

Gaieus

(although could maybe do with explicit instructions in post #1 for smoothing the subdivisions?).

Added:

Best is to soften these dividing edges (for the convenience of the next step)

Alan Fraser

I guess if you did a lot of this kind of thing...either because you design a lot of haciendas or have an inexplicable fascination with the Romanesque you could follow Gai's advice, but then do a SU render and prefabricate a load of custom arch maps in all the most common sizes...which would not only save quite a bit of time overall, but probably quite a lot of geometry as the whole exterior of the arch would then be just a single face. The original soldier course is for underneath, in case you have an open archway.

Gaieus

Deinitely a good way to go - I also did this when I was modelling these arches (especially that when projected, they could be used on arched windows curved on an apse wall)

Maybe the arches became a bit too uniform there (I later made a better, modified version though) but say with two texture maps and flipping the arch once in a while, you can get quite a good randomness.

pbacot

@alan fraser said:

you could follow Gai's advice, but then do a SU render and prefabricate a load of custom arch maps in all the most common sizes....

This sounds like an interesting approach for other uses. What is a SU render?

Great help Gai. Learning this sort of thing leads to better approaches to problem solving in SU in general (Of course, the next trick would be to make the mortar joints expand and the bricks stay rectangular.)

Thanks, Peter

Alan Fraser

Peter, I meant just flip the model onto its back, go to plan view and export a jpg....or you could probably do the same from the front elevation if you switch shadows off.

Gaieus

@pbacot said:

Of course, the next trick would be to make the mortar joints expand and the bricks stay rectangular.

Certainly. The above example was my very first attempt to do this with TT's UV Toolkit beforeit could do the "remember/restore UV" trick.

leedeetee

Just thinking ....

Does this work in conjunction with the textures associated bump map, too??

Gaieus

Yes.

pbacot

@gaieus said:

@pbacot said:

Of course, the next trick would be to make the mortar joints expand and the bricks stay rectangular.

Certainly. The above example was my very first attempt to do this with TT's UV Toolkit beforeit could do the "remember/restore UV" trick.

Oh, I thought it was using that. So there's a way to do rectangular bricks that is as easy?

leedeetee

@gaieus said:

Yes.

Awesoooooooooome.

Gaieus

Something like this?

Rendered with Twilight

Bump map and Twilight setup included

Alan Fraser