Bricks Map

Material Editor > Maps rollout > Click a Map button.> Material/Map Browser > Bricks

Bricks used for the walls of a house

Using the Bricks procedural map, you can create brick or stacked tiling of colors or material mappings. There are commonly defined architectural brick patterns available, or you can design custom patterns. With the Bricks map, you can:

Assign many of the maps available through the Material Editor.
Load textures and use colors in the pattern.
Control the amount of bricks in columns and rows.
Control whether there are holes in the bricked surface, revealing the mortar.
Control the size of the mortar gap and its roughness.
Apply random variance in the pattern.
Control the stacking layout by shifting how the bricks line up.

Procedures

Example: To create a brick wall:

Create a wall using a Box primitive, or use an existing surface in one of your scenes.
Open theMaterial Editor. Select an unused sample slot.
Click the Maps rollout to open it. Click the Map button for Diffuse to display the Material/Map Browser.
In the map list, select Bricks, then click OK.
The Bricks map is now assigned to the sample slot. On the Material Editor, you see new rollouts appear for this map.
On the Standard Controls rollout, use Preset Type to select the type of bricks for the wall. Running Bond is the default.
On the Material Editor toolbar, click Assign Material To Selection to apply the brick map to the wall. Then click Show Map In Viewport to see the applied map.
Open the Advanced Controls rollout. Under Bricks Setup, adjust Horizontal and Vertical Count. The default is eight rows high, with three repeats of the pattern in each row. Visually scale the size of the bricks to your scene. Also adjust Texture as well as Color and Fade Variance to fine-tune the appearance of the bricks.
Under Mortar Setup, adjust parameters for the texture of the mortar, gap spacing between bricks, and roughness of the mortar. You can also create missing bricks in the map by setting % Holes to a value above 0.
Under Miscellaneous, you can vary the color of the bricks by using the Random Seed option.

Example: To match the bricks on the top and side of a wall:

Select a wall mapped with brick.
On the Modify panel, choose Editable Mesh.
Turn on Sub-Object > Face.
Select the top face of the wall.
Open the Material Editor. Drag the wall’s brick material to an unused sample slot to duplicate the material.
Under Bricks Setup, adjust the horizontal and vertical count of the new material to match the side of the wall.
Apply the new brick material to the selected faces on the top of the wall.
Under Stacking Layout, align the bricks by using the Line Shift option.

Interface

Standard Controls rollout

Pattern Setup group

Preset Type—Lists the commonly defined architectural brick bonds, or patterns, plus a custom pattern, which you design by selecting options under the Advanced Controls and Stacking Layout rollouts. The following illustrations show some of the different bonds:

Common Flemish

Fine Running

Fine Stack

1/2 Running

Running

Stack

Advanced Controls rollout

Show Texture Swatches—Updates to show the texture assigned by a map for Bricks or Mortar.

Bricks Setup group

Texture—Controls the display of the current texture map for the bricks. When on, the texture is used as the brick pattern instead of the color swatch. When turned off, the color of the bricks is displayed; clicking the color swatch displays the Color Selector.

None—Acts as a target where you drag and drop maps for the bricks. When you click this button with a map assigned, the software displays the rollout for the map. You return this button to None (removing the assigned map) by dragging and dropping a None map from the Map/Material Browser.

Horiz. Count—Controls the number of bricks in a row.

Vert. Count—Controls the number of bricks in a column.

Color Variance—Controls the color variation among the bricks.

Fade Variance—Controls the fading variation among the bricks.

Mortar Setup group

Texture—Controls the display of the current texture map for the mortar. When on, the texture is used as the mortar pattern instead of the color swatch. When off, the color of the mortar is displayed, and clicking the color swatch displays the Color Selector.

None—Acts as a target where you drag and drop maps for the mortar. When you click this button with a map assigned, the software displays the rollout for the map. You return this button to None (removing the assigned map) by dragging and dropping a None map from the Map/Material Browser.

Horizontal Gap—Controls the horizontal size of the mortar between the bricks. This value is locked by default to the vertical gap, so that both values change as you edit one or the other. To unlock them, click the lock icon.

Vertical Gap—Controls the vertical size of the mortar between the bricks. This value is locked by default to the horizontal gap, so that both values change as you edit one or the other. To unlock them, click the lock icon.

% Holes—Sets the percentage of holes in the bricked surface caused by missing bricks. The mortar shows through the holes.

Rough—Controls the roughness of the edges of the mortar.

Miscellaneous group

Random Seed—Randomly applies patterns of color variation to the bricks. Does not require any other setting to generate completely different patterns.

Swap Texture Entries—Swaps the texture maps or colors between the bricks and the mortar.

Stacking Layout group

This group of controls is active only when Custom Bricks is selected in Standard Controls rollout > Pattern Setup > Preset Type.

Line Shift—Shifts every second row of bricks a distance of one unit.

Random Shift—Randomly shifts all rows of bricks a distance of one unit.

Row and Column Editing group