Anyone have any suggestions for a nice solar panel material that will not be too rendertime expensive?
I suppose it should look something a bit like this:
I would just create a texture from the image like so. Doubt your client would notice the difference. (Unless its an actual solar panel product visualization.)
Yes - I’ve done that. I just wondered if anyone had been clever enough to make a proceedral (spelling???) one. It’d be an interesting challenge don’t you think?
not if a texture will work just fine. 
I think textures alone have their limitations - especially with complex things like solar panels. You also get issues with tiling and repetation that procedral maps can help reduce. Perhaps a hibred of procedural and bitmap-based could work…
well…okay… but Im not following. wheres the tiling and repetition? Since one solar panel of the same make and model is basically identical to one another, wheres the problem?
Hey if you want to model it, cool go for it. The quality is all dependant on how itll be used and viewed. You haven’t specified that yet.
The final use will be an high resolution (hopefully) photorealistic image. I have a large wall made up of solar panels.
wheres the tiling and repetition? Since one solar panel of the same make and model is basically identical to one another, wheres the problem?
Repetition occurs all the time if you are not careful and the eye picks up on it almost immediately. Take a brick. One brick is not the same as another brick - even though they come from the same batch. If you are rendering a large wall - 10m long by 5m high - and you only use a bitmap texture of 1m x 1m, then bingo, repetition and tiling. This is the same for a solar panel - one panel is definately not the same as another. Grass. Tarmac. Paving. They all tile badly and its one thing that seperates a good image from a bad image in my opinion.
In addition to the underlying granular structure being repeated and tiled, a plain photo of something like this solar panel has strong reflections/lighting characteristics accross its surface which are picked up in a render and tile badly. Try copying the perspective corrected image that you have created side by side 3 or for times in a grid pattern in Photoshop and you will see what I mean.
might want to use a gradient ramp or something
Its getting complicated :roll:
So far I have a mottled blue/black background, two lots of proc tiles, each with masks, a falloff reflection with a tiled mask, itself being masked by a speckly version of the mottled blue/black background. :shock:
If I get anywhere, I will share the result
you have the GALVPLAT map in 3dsmax maps directory maybe with some modifications you can get a nice result.
okay I guess I should have been more specific. Im not really advocating applying the one texture to all your panels. I would have taken the panel image into photoshop again and created several “versions” to be used.
i dont use procedural maps anymore. they are several times slower than textures.
I found this, but it’s not free
http://www.istockphoto.com/file\_thumbview\_approve/505328/2/Solar\_Power.jpg
free:
http://www2.eng.cam.ac.uk/~cr310/Images/Multicrystaline%20solar%20cell.jpg