How about a ruby to apply a 3D texture/component?
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Let's say you have a building with different brick or rock finishes on the walls. Rather than taking a huge amount of time to draw each brick of each texture (when you can't copy and paste), there is a tool that works like this:
1-select a face, could be a wall.
2-a dialog box opens much like Profile Builder, where you would have a library of pre-drawn bricks,stone finishes, etc....pick one.
3-click OK and that finish is applied to the face.Just a thought.
Jeff -
These actually be geometry, right? So something of a repeating hathch, right?
I agree, I would love something like this. Its on my (long) list of things I want to tackle, but realistically its probably not something I'll get to very soon. But it really could be a cool plugin. Especially if it started getting fancy with the hatches being 3d and not just flat.
Procedural textures in general are high on my list really. I just need to get better at Ruby, and probably C++ or something. Ahh, in time,
Chris
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Exactly Chris! This would be such a time saver and the rendering would be that much more detailed. So.....you'll have something by next week?
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Just the other day I was thinking about something similar, I was thinking that a 'greeble' type plugin with different shapes like circles, rectangles (bricks), or whatever shape you create as a profile can be applied to a flat or curved surface. Or even a stamp of sorts.
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There must be a technique on how to do something similar with the existing tools and rubies. Projecting onto surface or something....
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I was working on a script that would take a component and attach it to every selected face. The script would scale the component to try to fit on the face as close as possible. I didn't get very far (as in, I never figured out how to handle components, but I think I know how now). But I never really felt a need to develop it since I couldn't quite see the utility of it.
But it definitely feels like there is some major potential here. Doing something like this is easy enough on a flat surface I think, its when the surface starts curving, then it gets too crazy for my brain to figure out 3 dimensionally.
Chris
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Chris,
I think if a ruby was written for this purpose, it would be a huge hit! Especially for Architectural models. Brick of all sorts, stone, siding and wood detail panels etc...I would BUY IT for sure and I'm sure many others here would too. Maybe a thread that lists a certain ruby wish and a poll attached could really help prioritize which rubies get written first between all the scripters. Maybe it could be figured out between all the ruby writers who is gonna write what. At least that way, you don't have two or more writer working on the same ruby need. Even post beside in the thread who is writing the ruby and people could PM that person with suggestions etc....just a thought or two.
Jeff
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bump
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I LOVE this idea.
one suggestion, I would like if there were an option to use a customized hatch as well as any standard hatch patterns you guys incorpotate into it.
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I think about this idea everyday. If I ever get good enough with this Ruby thing, this is one that I won't need to be reminded to make.
Its very high on my wish list! In fact, this idea is where shape bender came from - the idea of warping something existing to match a different form. I just need to get it to work 3 dimensionaly, instead of just 2.
Chris
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About 10 years ago I worked on a technology I called "Geometric Textures". The idea was that you associate some geometry with a UV space and then model as normal using regular textures.
However, when you come to render, the UV coordinates for those regular textured faces are used to generate surface geometry to add true depth relief.
So as textured facade looks like this:
But gets rendered like this:
It didn't take the world by storm though. ;-(
Adam
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Oooh... automatic displacement mapping...
So, did it not turn into anything? -
We did a 3dsmax plugin and some demos for PS2 but the lesson I learnt was you can't ask people to change their workflow lightly.
I should add that this is all done "on the fly" as the realtime polygons are rendered, not some model bloating process.
But frankly I'd use a parallax shader nowadays anyway. Not quite as good but you can do it on the GPU.
Adam
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You guys have to stop distracting Chris....he's got to get shape bender working with closed shapes so my life can be easier! While you're at it Chris...a tool to select all faces with the same surface area please.
Seriously, a 3d texture tool is something I wish for everyday as well, as it would be very useful for my landscape construction modeling.
I've also been thinking lately it would be nice to have a tool that is a combination of shape bender and profile builder. Something that will draw out repeating components (like brick) and bend them around curves and corners.
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@earthmover said:
a tool to select all faces with the same surface area please.
I could add that to my Selection Toys plugin. All connected faces of the same area or all faces in the currently active entity path?
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All faces of the same area, connected or disconnected. For example, let's say you had alternating big and little squares and you wanted to select all the big squares at the same time, then use joint push pull, if that makes sense.
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Makes sense. I'll get around to it.
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Related to work on ImageProfile2 (oops, spilled the beans), I have deciphered the PNG spec and can now read the PNG image data in Ruby (unfortunately, it is PC only until I also decipher the deflate/inflate algorithm).
While that may seem off-topic, it does have a direct correlation - an earlier thread discussed the possibility of a Ruby to create bump maps from SketchUp models (which I'm working on when I can). But it is conceivable that with some work, I could create a Ruby to turn a bump map texture into real geometry, just like this thread requests.
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@rickw said:
Related to work on ImageProfile2 (oops, spilled the beans), I have deciphered the PNG spec and can now read the PNG image data in Ruby (unfortunately, it is PC only until I also decipher the deflate/inflate algorithm).
Whaaah? You did? I was looking at the PNG, GIF and JPEG specs when I was making a thumbnail server in PHP once. That was not light material.
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That's why Rick has been so quiet lately - he's been locked down in his basement for the last 6 months deciphering image formats. Way to go Rick!
Chris
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