Cineversity

I am doing an exterior rendering of a house with a deck. I used a MoGraph cloner to create deck planks that sit on the deck. What would be the best way to texture the deck boards so that they don’t look so repetitive?

Hi Matt,

The main idea is normally to have two different random systems overlap each other, so the repetition is not that large. I assume here that your set up of the boards is already down, so I do not put too much attention on the layout.
Note that I used Linear in the Cloner to get a sequence numbering for the clones, the Grit will not do that. So I needed the Matrix to position those.

I have put together a little sketch, but you need to play with all the options, as the min/max in the random or the Color Shader Spline as shown. This can create these two layering random information that takes even with low numbers of images the tile effect out.

As a side not, I sliced an image into boards with Photoshop. (The search parameters for google are in the clip as well in the folder.)

Here are the files:
Scene file, one minute clip
https://www.amazon.com/clouddrive/share/5EqqLjQsyL75XjXD6wM2XubePX4KQG5QOosBUXjAao6

Let me know if there is something else, I’m happy to look into it.

All the best

Oh my goodness you went all out haha! I will study your file and see how you’ve set this up. I would have never been able to figure this out. Thanks so much Dr. Sassi! I will let you know if I’ve got any questions.

Matt

You’re very welcome, Matt!

Yes, please let me know if there is anything else, I’m certainly happy to look into it.

All the best

P.S.: I hope that helps to fine-tune your results. Note that you can select many points at once and pull them up or down, or use a value.

Clip (one minute):
https://www.amazon.com/clouddrive/share/izPdDZOQSBzcP4NLp5yc1UxKf4pniDaolcFjqVjDwzh

Cheers

Darn it Dr. Sassi you always go above and beyond haha! I had absolutely no idea about the ability to type in a custom formula for spline curves. That math stuff goes way over my head lol. That’s awesome that you can type in the number of control points and set them to a random value. That will come very helpful. I’ve attached a VERY ROUGH render of what I’m doing. Doing a render of the back of my house. My wife and I are thinking about building a screen porch on our deck, so I thought it would be fun to help visualize it first! Very early stages, but it’s coming along. I’m using Corona renderer for this particular project.

One quick thing with your setup. I see how you used the Inheritance Effector to distribute the cloned objects on the Matrix object. I tried to replicate this setup just using a Cloner set to Matrix, but yeah I wasn’t able to get the random distribution of light and dark boards using the color shader.

Thanks again for taking time to help me with this!!
Matt

Thanks a lot, Matt, very nice of you.

That looks already promising. Very nice light on the house. Yes, pre-viz has always a lot of benefits.

The points, the simplest is to type in any number between 0 and one , then the point number and done.

The IDs of each clones are not a given in Grid mode, hence the Matrix and the Linear in the Cloner.
The problem with the Grid is, that it can expand in three dimensions, or shrink. The new ID labels would be very chaotic

Since it is your house, maybe you can take even a 360º HDR around it, or camera project the surrounding.

Please, as usual, let me know if there is anything else, I’m happy to look into it.

All the best

Okay yeah, that makes sense with the ID labels with linear mode for a cloner.

I thought about doing a 360° HDR for my house actually! I just have no idea how to create it. The only thing I know of are those OSMO cameras. If I can get my hands on one, but I could do it that way?

Thanks again!
Matt

Thanks for the feedback, Matt.

Yes, the ID’s are an essential part in the MoGraph world. I learned last week how to sort them with the Voronoi-Fracture, but it wasn’t really working for this case, as I had hoped for. I need more R&D time on this

The 360ºx180º stuff, that is what I do since around twenty years, and SLR shooting even (way) longer. With my love for 3D and my long experience in photography (educated in film and photography at the University of the Arts, Berlin), I have had put together a series for this field: Photography for 3D Artists.
We (Cineversity) decided to put it on my YouTube channel, so “normal” photographer could get into this special field as well. So team work is based on the same idea of the work itself. It is more “reproduction” photography than art photography. To gain the highest quality, some stuff needs to be explained, hence the nearly two hundred parts. My target was, to get 3D artists and photographers on the same side, so the results are really usable. The link is below.

Anyway, all is sorted in play lists. To shoot a 360ºx180º, you need to keep the nodal point stable, which is explained of course in the tutorials, with the aid of Cinema 4D. The options are even in the DIY version useable. In fact I use a self build rig since long, it is in its second decade now, with a four digit number of panos shot. drsassi.me

If you have any questions, please let me know. I really love cameras, virtual or practical ones, especially in combination, and since this year, even in the air, with a FAA pilot license (part 107) . So, enough bragging:

ENJOY

Wow man, that would so helpful actually! I’m curious about how all that works! Getting an actual environment to reflect would be pretty cool!

Nice that you like the idea, Matt.

I use a normal DSLR for this.

With the house already in the middle, we need some tricks here. The preferred method would be then Camera projection, or shoot from each wind and combine it, …camera projection to the aid! I have discussed such work in my JET series here on Cineversity, where I had to rebuild rooms or parts of the city (from the ground or 1000 feet up, to get the reflections right. So you can shoot from a good angle, camera project it roughly and get even some parallax in the reflections with a moving camera. Endless options

If you have a camera position for the 3D work, that will help as well, to shoot a hi res background plates. Good planning is half the work, or at least prevents to double the workload in post.

My best wishes for the project

This is some really great information Dr. Sassi. You sound very knowledgeable in this area!

Also, I’m not sure the link showed up in your previous post above!

Matt

You’re very welcome, Matt. I hope it will support your efforts to dig deeper into that area.

The camera (SLR as well later in the ‘80s the video camera) was always more of a tool for any job I did. Now it has its own place in my work of course.

Thanks a lot!  Cheers.