randomizing glazing mapping.

[re:FORM]

Just quick question for you guys.... what method do you use to quickly randomize mapping on glazing (or any cladding for that matter)?

I'm talking about situation where you have a single polymesh that has many panes of glass. What I think would be the best way would be to map the polymesh with a box-map that sets the correct scaling, then have a script to 'scatter' the position of the uvw on a per object basis (ie through uvw-unwrap). Is there such a script?

I know about the select random faces script, or the randomise map phase, but both of those require quite a bit of additional work to either break the polymesh down into individual panes of glass, or to have a large number of multi-subobject maps. It would be alot nicer to be able to randomize the mapping in a single modifier.

Any suggestions ?

[MegaPixel]

There is a tutorial over at cgarchitect.com somewhere that explains the process of randomizing the smoothing groups of a tiled floor so that the light reacts differently to each polygon. That could be one solution to your problem. I suppose turning on "Faceting" in your material is out of the question? Other then that, I'd go all out and model seams between each panel of glass by selectign all polygon edges and outlining them by some small fraction, then extruding them a bit. That's my two cents anyhow - I don't know of any scripts personally that will help you with the random material scattering.

[re:FORM]

Thanks mega, but that's not quite what I was meaning. I've already got the panes individually modelled ie

-plane object subdivided,
-edit poly,
-select all faces and 'inset' by joint dimension,
-select inverse and delete poly's between panes,
-shell to glass thickness.

Its not a randomised slight rotation of the panes, to give slightly different reflections that I want, its a randomisation of the mapping on the panes.... ie for a noise map used to add the slight bumps caused by the rollers during production of architectural glass, or to add dirt over the panes.

I'll post some examples in a few minutes.

[MegaPixel]

My apoligies, I was half asleep when I read your post and I hadn't finished my morning coffee yet

[dlparisi]

For things like glass curtainwalls and limestone panels, I've set up a multisub with about 5 differnet but nearly identical materials (bump or color is slightly different) and then applied that to the object. Add a MaterialByElement modifier, set to the randomization you want and your done.

[re:FORM]

MaterialByElement Brilliant!

[re:FORM]

Whilst the materialByElement approach is ideal for what I wanted to achieve, I wonder if the workflow I am using could be automated.

ie

- Single poly object with all the window panes as described above(previous post).
- UVW map to set the correct scale of the noisemap
- (and this would be the automated part....) UVW-unwrap map to randomise the position of each face in the editor of the uvwmap.

Is there a script out there that will go through each face and randomly move the UVW coords? I'll have a go at writing it myself if I get a chance as it seems like a straightforward thing to script.

This alternative workflow would mean you only need one material, which in my books makes life a little bit easier

Thanks for all your suggestions guys.