3dsmax Texturing tutorial : House texturing

 3dsmax Texturing tutorial : House texturing

   This tutorial will show you how to texture a scene. I will try to do a simple texturing job on a complex scene (a lots of objects). So the whole texturing is going to be done only in 3DStudioMax.
The main problem is that we are going to texture an architectural scene. Surfaces on scenes like this are big. For example, part of front facade, left of the entrance is 5 meters (16.5 feet) wide and 7 meters (23 feet) high. So if you want to texture it with bricks, that's one hell of a big brick map. And the biggest brick map I ever so was 3 meters (10 feet)in with and 1.5 meters (5 feet) high, so even with this one there are going to be some repetitions. So its up to you to make that repetitions as less visible as you can.

    When I first get my hands on Total Textures I was delighted. I spent just couple of hours browsing trough those maps. These maps are great, especially for close up scenes, but can they be used on big surface scenes. You bet they can.....I will try to texture this scene just by using Total Textures.

	This is the scene properties. On the left see a perspective view of the scene. A House. There is only one omni light lighting the house, but you can insert a few more to lit it more and see better what are you doing with textures. Do not forget to delete those extra lights before rendering. Here you can download a .max file (WinRAR but self extracting)
	The first thing I done was to apply a texture to that big surface left of the entrance. Used a standard max material, with re014.jpg map (total texture V.3) in diffuse slot. What I got was big ugly dirty red wall. To calm it down a little tile it U=2, V=2. Its better a little bit but map is repeating, so pick a uvw mapping gizmo and move it up. Maybe we could hide some erupting parts of the map in back of windows.
Maps that have no big contrast in color and shapes you see on them are the best for erupting.
	Map that has no visible contrasts in color and shape and can be repeated many times on one surface.
	But with this one is going to difficult. See that dark part of the map at the top. Its going to be visible when you repeat it just once. See image on left.
	Before we go any further lets see how you make those materials. Open a Material editor. Click on any gray ball. This is going to be a material. On left you see a Standard material setup. Put a desired map in Diffuse map slot, and a matching black and white map in Bump map slot. Sometimes you can use a bump map as a Specular map too. Now is up to you to set those other parameters to get the result you want. Ant every material is different and unique.
	Second thing I done was to make a brick material and apply it to middle part of front facade. What I saw was a big size bricks on front and side walls. Its time to adjust that map. After experimenting a little bit I got satisfying results with U Tile=4.5 and V Tile=8.0 ( see image below)
	Tiling adjustments can be done in Material editor for every map separately or in UVW Mapping modifier.
	I prefer for this scene to make a material and to adjust tiling for every object separately in UVW map modifier. If this does not help try to select a mapping gizmo and scale it or move it to get satisfying results.
	If you have a map that is 982x618 pixels, and you are going to apply it to 400x400 units object, Max is going to squeeze that map in to the object boundaries and map will be unnaturally scaled. So UVW Mapping modifier will help you to get that map look natural and in best size.
	This is that UVW Mapping modifier. Starting from the top, see that gizmo is active and you can work with transforming it. Mainly I use box mapping. And at the end is Tiling adjustments.
	Next, to apply brick material to this box object that represent support for entrance roof. Now we have to adjust that material so the bricks must be the same size as those on the wall.
	This is done. See how the bricks are the same size on both object (wall and box). There are two same box objects in scene. We are not going to do again same adjustments on that other box. But yes he has to look almost the same.
	What we are going to do is open Edit Modifier Stack and copy UVW Mapping modifier from first box and paste it to second box Modifier Stack. So the work is done faster and easier.
	Lets see the whole picture. You can see how that brick map is repeating on that front wall. Lets hope that with light and shadows we will cover that up. You can always take front picture of that wall, take it to photoshop and there paint a brick map and get rid of repeating parts. But we are not going to do that this time.
	Brick material is applied to some other objects and every object mapping coordinates are being adjusted separately.
	This is a result.
	For ground I use a Multy/Sub-Object that has grass and stone materials. Difference is that this time I used box mapping for faces that will be stone and planar mapping for faces that will be grass. UV Tile is for grass material. It repeats, but you can not see that write away.
	To see what have we done so far.
	To apply stone material on side walk.
This house should to be red with gray architectural elements. But during the texturing process I made some changes and process can be seen below
	This is the part where the big change happened. Only maps of trees are not from Total Texture cds. Trees are just planes with tree texture attached. To make those trees not look the same use a different transparency map.
And this is it. Final render.
These are some of the materials used.
Here you can see all maps used in this texturing process.
This is screen just before render button was clicked.
In scene there is only one omni light and sky light. Rendering was done with Brazil r/s.