SECTION 2 - Modeling and Detail Editor

36] Brick quicky, By Conny Joennson.
(Based upon a "3D Artist" article by Alex Lindsey)

The idea was that he wanted to make a whole wall made of individual blocks (or slabs, if You like) of stone, and they had to be _very_ detailed because that's what his customer had ordered.

The "how-to" was written for Form-Z on the Macintosh (yurk, spit!) but the technique proved to be apliquable (pun) on Imagine as well. And here it is:

Start up a (new if You like) project
Go to the Detail Editor
Add a primitive plane (200, 150, 1, 1) and pick it
Zoom the perspective view so that the plane covers the whole view
In attributes, add the Clouds texture with default settings
Quickrender, this will take _quite_ a while
Save the quickrender somewhere
Delete the plane
Add a new plane (200, 150, 20, 15) and pick it
Go to Pick Points mode and select pick method Drag Box
While holding the shift key drag a box around all points but those at the outmost edges of the plane
Translate the picked points -10 units in Y
In the top right and low left corner will be a couple of polygons that will still lie flat along the original position. If You like (and I personally did) You can delete the edges that are lying flat and add two new (correctly oriented) faces in each corner
Go to Pick Groups or Pick Objects mode
Select the Applique function, and use the cloud quickrender that You saved just a little while ago
In the applique requester select transform axes, Translate the brush +5 units in X and Z. Size it 10 units smaller than the original values in X and Z
Accept these settings and wait for the plane to be appliqued. If You are not satisfied with the result you can always "undo" it and applique it all over again using another Y size for the brush
Now You should have the basic shape of a rough cut rock block

To make it all really _look_ like a rock block you will have to colour it rockily (maybe using the concrete texture or - as the guy who wrote the article - a colour cycled and filtered version of the clouds brush) and You will also need to use a good bump map to simulate the grains and pores in the rock's surface.

I tried to use the leather texture to simulate the pores but that was no hit, I can tell You.

What I _can_ tell You is that Alex L. managed to produce some _very_ realistic rock blocks using this method, and given some time to experiment with this technique I am sure that I will be able to do so too.

The exact same teqnique could be used for making a basic landscape. I still haven't tried that, but I will (when I can find the time...). Perhaps using the Mountain Top texture... hmmm...

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