[sinatropus]

Hi,

The Brick procedural could be much more intuitive to set up and to use. http://support.nextlimit.com/display/mxdocsv3/Brick
Let me demonstrate with an example from archviz in which this material is supposed to be used most often.
If I would like to cover a wall, lets say 44 meters in length, with House Bricks preset without repeating texture.
With real scale 1x1 m the result is following which defies the logic of procedural as it's repeating after every 1 meter.

So okey, we have to change the UV mapping scale to 44x44 m. Now the first problem is that Brick Length and Width use percentage of the texture UV mapping tile size (while the Mortar uses meters). So let's say the brick is 250x85 mm in size and mortar is 10mm. So the Width should be 0,25/44=0,00568181818181818181818181818182 and height 0,085/44=0,00193181818181818181818181818182. Now if one would like to make it match with modeled bricks, then it wouldn't fit, because the precision of width or height is only 4 decimal points. And also the mortar thickness had to be set to 0,0001 not 0,01 (m?).
Why not just make the brick width and height in meters not in percentage of the UV tile and always just use real scale for the UV mapping? Or is Maxwell converting the set UV map tile as one texture image and then repeats it? So infinite procedural is not possible?

Another different suggestions would be the possibility to also make mortar thickness negative so with low sharpness it would be possible to blend textures together (to hide tiling) without the mortar being visible (even if it is set to 0) and the different brick textures would just overlap. The problem with mortar is its color which will override the mortar texture even if it would be the same as the bricks.

[Mihai]

I agree it's a little confusing at the moment and I think a good way to work with it right now is to just divide by 10 or 20, no matter the size of the wall you apply it to. In your case of course if you don't want any repetition at all you would need to divide by 44, but if you just divide by 20 you only get two repeats across that whole area. Maybe it's not so often a whole 44 meter wall will be visible in the render. Btw you can right-click any numeric field and choose "Decimal precision" to raise it. Max is 5.

I think it was done this way for two reasons - so it's not tied to using only a 1mx1m cubic UV map, and also you need a way to tell the procedural what should be the size of the random "tile" of bricks. A tile with thousands of all random procedural bricks in it takes longer to generate. Also Maxwell can't know what is the size of the geometry the material will be applied to and so how should it know when to stop generating the random pattern so you can see it in the viewport and the render?

My suggestion is similar to yours, and just to keep it compatible with cases where one might not want to use real world scale, add an extra parameter above the brick width/height, "Use Real scale". If user checks this, then 0.25 in width means 25cm, not 25% of UV space, AND user must make sure to set the Tiling method to meters and input the size of the randomly generated brick pattern. In your case you would input 44 and behind the scenes that 0.25 is divided by 44, as well as the mortar size. You also have the flexibility to enter a smaller randomly generated pattern, lets say 15 in case you know you will probably not see any tiling from any camera angles.

So essentially, IF "Use real scale" in the brick procedural is used, divide the brick width/height with the Repeat XY in the materials Tiling parameter. The Repeat XY should be the size of your geometry if you don't want the bricks pattern to repeat at all.

There is also another thing that needs to be fixed with the tiling, hopefully it's possible. At the edges, I can see that the different brightness variations in the bricks get cut off at the edge of the tile:

Image-002.jpg

[luis.hijarrubia]

This is interesting. We could use the dividing factor as randomize one, but we should done something in the algorithm to make sure that common bricks between 2 tiles have the same color. I mean something like u=3.17, so it's 0.17 of this tile, but it's the third tile, so I know can make it unique, but making sense with tiles 2 and 4. I like the challenge, I wish I have time.

[sinatropus]

Thanks for the reply, Mihai. Your suggestions of Use Real Scale option makes sense and that would be more intuitive and user friendly indeed.

44 meters was just an example. It took me some time but I figured it out that I should use the 10 multiple increment of the brick size for the UV mapping scale to make it work more or less, without pulling my hair out entirely. In archviz there are situations when even hundreds of meters can be visible in the view but if it's not repeating more than 2-4 times, it's not really noticeable.

Anyways, I think the Brick procedural has a really great potential in the architectural visualization, hence I mentioned the negative mortar thickness in my first post second paragraph. Found a similar topic on it just now, as the forum search is working again. viewtopic.php?f=2&t=44690&start=30#p394431
This little option would make brick procedural really useful for something which it was not actually meant for. To make textures repetition a bygone. Here's an example how this area of 100x50 meters could be covered without tiling only with this 3x3 meter concrete texture, if the mortar would not have it's own thickness and the brick textures could just overlap when brick transition sharpness is low. Or if at least the mortar color would be possible to be turned off to use the same texture for the mortar without it being colored.

[Mihai]

I see what you mean, although I think it would be much more intuitive to add a a texture randomizer, and a texture placement randomizer with simply masking, to material editor. A thread about this should be started I'm thinking that since we already have the Layer and Layer mask "base" in our material editor, something could be worked out based on that, just semi automate some things...

[AndreasAM]

I agree with all is suggested, but please prioritise the increase of the number of bricks (materials) to at least 5, but preferably 7 or 9, first. All brick walls, to achieve some life like impressions, need at least those numbers to be able to make realistic up close shots with high detail. Especially when detailing and modelling monuments or existing old buildings.

The %-variation in color, alone, as now available, is not enough to achieve this. The bigger variation in texture and color combined, the better. It will make a wall much more realistic

The brick procedural is potentially great for tons of materials in archviz, like floors, pavement, tiles, wooden plank walls, curtains, cloth etcetc, especially when combining it with a brick procedural as a map for the displacement of the brick, tile or plank in relation to each other ("jitter" in the plane of the wall or floor), by using grey colours.