Is there a texture utility to modify a texture placement of a bitmap?

[Antioche]

Hi,
That same way as there are utility texture to color correct a bitmap, is there a similar thing to affect the texture placement of a bitmap (tiling, offset, rotation, etc.)?
This would be very handy when creating multis for offset randomisation, as a single bitmap could be instantiated and wrapped with such a utility to modify its different texture placement parameters (to avoid repetitive tiling, for instance, so that a single bitmap could be used in all of them (as instances) and could be swapped to another easily without having the recreate the whole multis texture.

At the moment, I need to make separate copies of the bitmap, each with different texture placement variation. Changing the bitmap requires to reload it is each sub material, which is time consuming...

Any idea?

Cheers,

Thibaut

[candymanjl]

Hey!

I haven't used V-Ray that much so there's probably a better way than this, but here's what I've done.

I create the material in V-Ray and add it to my object. Then I use SketchUp's tools to adjust the bitmap setting. Double click the material in the material browser to bring up sizing. Right click on the object to bring up the texture move and rotate options. So far that's gotten me what I need, but I'm doing simple stuff.

[GD3DESIGN]

I have a few different methods/tricks for this kind of thing. Can you give an example what you're trying to replicate? wood flooring? stone tiles, etc?

[georgi.georgiev]

Hi Antioche

Kindly note that there is no such utility that can randomize the offset / repeat parameter and this would have to be done manually in the Texture Placement parameters.

You could use the Multi-Sub texture afterwards to randomize the distribution. You could check the following video, which details the workflow for this:
https://youtu.be/IicE5MZPLkk?t=686

In the meantime, please be informed that the dev team are looking for a better solution in this respect, however, when it will be implemented is uncertain at the moment.

[caecarvalho]

Hi Antioche

there's a plugin from TIG that can do what you are asking. It works on faces, groups or components. It's called 'Texture Randomizer'.
For groups and components make shure the textures are applied to the faces.
You can find it here: https://sketchucation.com/pluginstor...tureRandomizer
It's free, but you need to be registered.

Hope it helps,

Best regards,

Caetano

[Antioche]

Hi,
Thanks for the suggestions.

Caetano: that is a useful plugin, indeed. I have used Eneroth's texture randomising tool and that works well within sketchUp. My question related more to the V-Ray side of things, and in particular the use of Multisub materials to automate that randomisation of all texture map variations. A texture placement tool would allow to change all instances of a bitmap within that multisub while preserving the placement variation alignment between all the maps (reflection, bump, etc.).

Georgi: My idea was to have a Texture placement utility texture (like we have color correction, for instance), so that an instance of a texture can be displaced along the object's UV. This way, when I has randomised the placement and color of a Multisub material (say, plywood panels), I could duplicate the multis and simply all instances of the each map (diffuse, reflection, etc.) to create a new randomised multisub material (say, concrete panels) by simply reloading then. This way the placement and color variations in the MultiSub would be preserved. At the moment, duplicating a complex Multisub requires every sub-instance of the material (with its varied texture placement) to be reloaded manually, which is time consuming. Or would you suggest an alternative way to do this in a time effective way? Maybe by repathing the texture maps with the file path editor?

Cheers,

Thibaut

[Antioche]

Actually, just tried the filepath editor approach to try to duplicate a Multisub material with updated bitmap texture maps while keeping the texture placement variations of the MultiSub. This did not work better than manually reloading each bitmap, as the filepath editor lists each texture placement variation of the bitmap as a different bitmap and I could not find a quick way to repeat all (similar but displaced) texture map to a new bitmap in one step. Select several before repeating only allow a folder to be selected and the filepath editor expects to find in that folder a texture with the same filename (the whole point being to point them to a new bitmap with a different filename...)

Any alternative workflow you would suggest?

Note that the TriPlanar randomisation options allow to automatically randomise placement, but I run into another issue with this (see my other recent thread: https://forums.chaosgroup.com/forum/...tchup-viewport)


Cheers,

Thibaut

[konstantin_chaos]

Hi Antioche,

Can you please share an image of what you're after (an example scene could also help).
There might be a way to achieve the effect you're after within the existing shaders.

Regards,
Konstantin

[Antioche]

Hi Konstantin,
Here's a view of an example scene (screenshot and test SKP scene). The material "Timber Profile randomised" is used for the creation of timber beams, to get avoid visual repetition. The Multisub textures are made using the same technique as one of your training tutorials (that used Corten panels).
As you can see, if I wanted to alter the look of the beams, I would have to manually edit the filepath of 10 bitmap textures, even though it only uses a single actual bitmap...

If V-Ray had a simple "texture placement" (or UV alteration) utility texture, that basically duplicated the texture placement drop down section of the bitmap texture, one could create a single instance of the bitmap texture, then wrap each additional instances of the same bitmap in this texture placement utility texture that would over-ride (or add to? maybe an option to choose in that utility texture?) the texture placement of this "master" bitmap texture, I could simply reload one filepath (either in the asset manager or in the filepath editor) to change the look of that material while keeping the randomisation.
This would be really useful and would not be too complex to implement (I assume naively!), since it duplicates an existing UI element.

Cheers,

Thibaut

[konstantin_chaos]

What you need is indeed possible in V-Ray.
Unfortunately you can't really set it up via the V-Ray for SU interface.
I'll try to set it up as a test and we can think about enabling such a workflow in the future.