Anatomy of a Wall - Part 2
"In to the Mix - The Wall"

a Meski DTE tutorial

Copyright 2004, Robert Cox
May not be distributed without the written consent of author
 


 

Introduction
 

Well folks, we are just about at the end of this tutorial.  Hopefully you will be able to see why you have endured cubes, squares, patterns, phase and all of the other stuff.  By understanding pattern creation, you will have the ability to create realistic or surrealistic materials for your images.  Why? Because you know, in a general way, what effects what for any noise source or combination of noises.

For me, learning is a process not an event.  It takes time for me to understand.  I avoid getting frustrated because I can't grasp new ideas and concepts immediately.  I learned this lesson a long time ago when I bought my first real graphics computer the Commodore Amiga.  I bought the ROM Kernel, Windows, Hardware, and Operating System manuals.  When staked up, they made a great foot rest.  I couldn't get past the first page in any of them.  But as I worked with the computer, each time I opened one of those books, I understood a little more.  For me, the same is true for the DTE.
 

Designing a Wall
 

  1. Create a cube and stretch it out like the one in the image above.  Rotate it in "Y" to 45 degrees.  Make it as you want.


     

  2. Apply the Nothing Sine Mat to it and make sure that you have the World Space mapping mode selected.


     

  3. Go into the DTE.  Change the noise type and settings as shown above.  The reason the Octaves are set at 6 is that I want rich detail in the surface of my wall.  As I went up in Octaves, I went up in frequency to achieve this.
     

     

  4. In the beginning, I don't want to use color.  So, I adjust the color buttons, from bottom to top, in a gray scale.  Basically this corresponds to the Bump and Alpha.  After adjusting your color, click "C" on and off to see that you are in sync with the Alpha and Bump.


     

  5. Select Done and go out to the Material Editor.  Set your scaling to 20 as shown above.
     

  1. Render to see what you have.  If the general pattern of white, gray, and black are not what you are looking for, go back to the DTE and change Frequencies or Rotation in X,Y, and/or Z to get the layout that you want.  Don't worry about bump or color yet.  All we are trying to do here is establish the relative sizes of white ( the good part of our wall ), gray ( the partially eroded part of the wall ) and dark gray ( holes ).  We'll refine these later.


     

  2. Now let's add some character to the surface of our wall.  Go back into the DTE and set Phase as shown above.  Go back out and render.  Adjust Phase to your liking. 


     

  3. The default for the Basic Nothing Sine bump is 25.4.  Try lowering that if you think that the relief of your wall is too much. The image above is with 25.4.  However, there is another way to add some "flat" to our wall.


     

  4. Go into the DTE and set the Filter for Component1 to Quantize.  Set "a" approximately to -1.0 and "b" to +.9.


     

  1. Now set "c" to a number that reflects your idea of the level of detail you want.  I am going to try 13.


     

  2. Notice the stepped look to the surface.  I'll leave "c" for awhile until we get a little farther along.  You can always change it. :)  Now you can see why I introduced you to "Quantize". :)


     

  3. For my eye, the render above of the wall is a little much.  So, I changed the scaling to 10.0 and moved the sun to the right to see how my bump is doing.


     

  4. Notice just to the right of the cursor in the image above, that the light gray to dark gray shadow appears to be wrong.  The black should be white if the light is highlighting the raised white area.  Hmmm... negative bump.


     

  5. Above is a blowup of that area with negative bump.  It makes sense now.
     

Time to Color
 

 


  1.  

 


 

  1. By clicking on the Dart just below the color buttons, change the color mode to Spline Interpolation.  Set your colors something like shown above.  Notice the bottom color is almost white but we have very little, if any, white showing in the preview.  Why? 




    Check our Filter for Component1 and you will see that the peak of the waveform doesn't quite reach the top.  However, the Filter will blend white with the middle color, dark blue, to give us the varying shades of blue.  We have a dynamic color mixer!! :))


     

  2. What we want to do now is add some surface color to give our wall some more character. 


     

  3. For the noise in Component2, choose as shown above.  How did I decide to use this?  I played until I found something that looked like it fit.  :)  I used very high frequency and an high Octave number to give me detail.


     

  4. Setup the Filter as shown above.  Now, choose some Contrasting colors.  While I am working with color, I'll choose some really yucky colors to contrast the other Component's colors so that I can see what I am doing.  The very last thing we will do with this material is coordinate the color.

    When you get this done, render.  On your way out through the Material Editor, adjust your bump to -8.0.  Plop render and go back to the DTE  adjusting the Filter and Noise to suit you.  Do not use bump here because it will blow the bump away from Component1.


     

  5. Finally, let's add some cracks to the upper part of our surface with channel 3. 
     


 

  1. Render.


     

  2. As with any material, it is time to tweak.  I have set the colors and modified some of the settings.  They are listed below.
     

Color



 

Noise


 

Phase


 

Next - Holes