Hi need help getting stuck not sure Im not just spinning my wheels here. Using TFP V14. Getting used to the features. - One of my projects is a home that I am trying to remodel and show how this will look with certain additions. Its a slump Block house that the Bricks was painted a bright yellow.
I have the walls and the house built. I can either have the materials options Brick, or Concrete Block, these don't match the color or even close enough for goverment work. I need to have the texture of brick but a different color. Anyone run into this.
Can you have a material Bricks and them put in a color? Tried Paint brush but this pulls up the elements Material and then back to the same problem.
I have selected Type to be Masonary, and then material to be brick, but also tried concrete block. but the Masonary Tecture does not show and there is no way I can see to have colored bright yellow brick.
My options seem to be Bright, block or solid color.
Tried the Dropper hoping to just change the color but no go.
Any Ideas?
I have looked through the forum and did not find anything that answered my questioned exact, and others were too confusings understand. On is by selecting a texture but this talks about a picture.
Hi, Welcome to the forum!!
Unlike Floorplan 3D these is no way to colour a texture unfortunately. You have one or the other. What this means in your case is you will have to import a photo of the yellow bricks into the Materials list.
This is quite easy if you are used to manipulating images in Paint Shop Pro, Photoshop or other image editor but if not it may be a little more difficult.
The difficulty is to get the brick texture to repeat properly. The photo must be an even colour density across it (or you will get square 'shadows') and the image needs to be cropped along the joins in the bricks so that they still 'interlock' when the program tiles it across the wall.
Another option would be to copy one of the textures of brick that is close and do a 'colour shift' in an image editor to turn it yellow. Settings/Program Settings/General will show you where the Textures file is located and using Windows Explorer you can copy and open one from there that you know will already tile correctly.
If you need more explanation on these options just ask or, if you are not familiar with image editing at all, just post a photo of a section of the brickwork you want here and I will create a texture from it for you,
or indicate the existing texture that is close and I will do a colour shift for you. To do the latter I would need to have some idea of the type of yellow though.
Allan
Thanks, this pointed me in the right direction and I found the library. Not in the quickstart pdf or help so that was good news. I was able to access the library through the catalog manager / library and material. I was able to edit the file in Printmaster that I have. Also have an image editor in Hp scanner but don't know yet if this is any better then the printmaster or not. The image editor in HP creates problems with drivers that HP has never repaired for the model I have. Will try though. I thought I had the saturation right but need to learn a little more on that.
The image looks fine on material list image but when paint it there is shadows around the blocks plus I didn't quite understand what you meant by joining at the joints. Does that mean I have to make it jaggered like a puzzle so one side of the image fixes exactly into the other and then repeats cleanly. How
possisble is that? Any little tips on that?
I have to play with this a bit but I did have some question on the Materials property dia box. There is editing options of Tile height and tile width which seems to default at 3'3". What is this? I changed to bigger tiles and did not seem to change how the texture affixed to the wall.
You can select them with a check mark but what does that do? I changed it to 8' height 5' width and it did not seem to paint where there was doors and the space would have been less then the 5 feet, but even where it was the image still showed duplicating itself in 3 ft blocks.
Do you have hany suggestions on the presetting effect on the rending. I assumed this is just like how paint would look like satin or flat. but not really sure. Any ideas?
I have not tried the second way you suggest yet. I will, but what works best ? Which is the fastest and the easest?
Thanks so much for your quick resoponse.
william
Hi William,
Now that you have found the textures open one in your image editor you will notice that it is a photo of brickwork and cut to a square shape, usually 128 pixels or 256 pixels square. They have been cropped along the horizontal mortor joints and vertically on the joints on every second brick, the ones in between being cut in half. When this image is tiled onto the wall in your model, it will repeat, joining at the horizontal mortor joints and vertically also. Vertically it needs to be cropped so the the half brick matches the half brick on the other size of the texture square, since they will join to each other, so the two half bricks must be the same colour shade. With most image editors you could copy one half brick to the other side of the image so the brick colour will then be identical when the two edges come together. Similarly the whole image has to be the same desity of colour all over or you will see a checkered pattern. Again most image editors should have a lighten/darken tool that can be used to lighter or darken one or other side of the texture to even it up.
If you are able to take a photo of the brickwork you need in direct sunlight prefereably and then use the central part of the image, since some cameras get dimmer at the edges.
If your image editor has the necessary tools to 'shift' the colour of an existing brick, then this could be easier since the texture itself will already be the matched side to side and top to bottom and will be of even density.
Re the dialog box. The 3'3" is actually 1000 mm or 1 Metre - obvioulsy it is Metric underneath. It is just the nominal size for the texture and normally will be left as it is with the existing textures. You can untick the vertical for example so the texture will only tile horizontally but will stretch the image vertically. I have used this before for a curtain, so that from a small photo of curtain I can get the full height without having to worry about the gathering in the curtain not joining when it tiles vertically. You can use this to size your bricks correctly too. Count how many bricks there are on the real wall and then change these settings so that you have the same number of bricks vertically when the texture tiles across the wall.
Similarly you can use this to also to size other textures to your model. For example if you have a floor tile that is 1' square, you would change the 3'3" to 1' and your tile will be 1' square on your model's scale. You can use these settings too by clicking the Mapping button on the Appearance tab of the element. You can override the size to get the effect you want, rotate the texture or move it across the surface (Position buttons) to align the floor tile for example with the wall or position a patterned fabric in a certain way on a chair.
I would be very careful with shine on surfaces, especially large areas. It must be very slight or the reflections will look unnatural. Some settings are already too shiny. Architraves sometimes reflect lights too much and can look like glass instead of varnish. I find I have to dull them down. At the same time I find glass often does not reflect enough, so boost it a bit.
I hope that has helped a bit in understanding the textures.
Ask again if it was not clear or you need more explanation.
Allan
Dear Alan,
Thanks for the location of the textures I was able to copy an existing texture and change the color to what is that worked best. The testures was the easiest to do.
I need to play around with this some more but this opens up a lot more to what i am trying to do which is add items to specific house designs.
I will
William
Just an idea....
If you were to use a program like "paint" and draw your own brick. For example, bright yellow with black or grey lines to represent the mortar lines. Then save it to the textures directory/folder it should be selectable.
I'd suggest making a copy of an existing texture and renaming it, for example, (Clay Brick 2 yellow.jpg). Then alter that file. This should insure that you have the proper resolution etc. that TFP uses.
Hope it works for you.....let me know.....good luck!