lightwave noise tutorial

Howto:Make a photo realistic looking brick material.

Often i see renderings of buildings, and it surprises me how nice and precise the models
are made, but quite often the materials are lifeless and dead.
If photo realism is your goal, the materials need some dirt,scratches etc.
I know this is basic knowledge, but it is rarely seen, in most architectural renderings.
For this tutorial we need a good map of a brick wall, at least 600x600 pixels, be sure
that the map covers a large area of the wall, 20 stones is a minimum for perfect tiling
of brick´s.The map Also have to be square, otherwise it will not map properly,
if using the "cubic image map" option in the surfaces panel.

The map used in this tutorial is made from a photo of a typical red Danish brick wall,
but as building materials like bricks, varies from country to country, you may want to
use a custom map.

Open your preferred image editing program to check if the map tiles perfect,
before making the bump map.
Then open modeller and make a simple box, ca. 3x5x0.3 meters,and name the box wall. This box will only serve as a test item for the brick material, exact measurements is not so important.

Next open the surfaces panel, an open the color texture menu, by pressing the
"T" buttonright to the surface color button. And select your texture image.
Select "Cubic image mapping" and turn off "Texture antialiasing".
Set texture size to match the type of brick you are using, "tree Danish bricks plus
fillings measures 200 cm, so the texture size for this map will be 1.8,1.8,1.8 m.
Apply the bump map by opening the "Bump map" menu in the surfaces panel,and
use the same settings for the bump map so far.(leave the default texture amplitude
for the bump map at 50%).

Now it's time to add some noise to the brick wall, in this case i will imitate sulfur
emerging from a newly laid brick wall.
Click the "Add New Texture" button from within the "Color Texture" menu and
select fractal noise as map type, set texture opacity value to 30% and "Texture color"
to 230,230,230.Rest of the values are default.

Next add some dirt to the wall, by pressing the "Next Texture" again and add a
second "Fractal Noise" to the material, with the values,"Texture color" 96,31,15,
"Frequencies" 3,"Contrast" 1,5,"Small Power" 0,8.

Press F9 and the result should look like this. Try to play around with the settings,
using different types off procedural textures and opacity values, to get just the result
you like.

Note:Visit the projects page to see some examples from the real World.