Correct tiling values for Iray shader presets?

tl155180

Does anyone know what the correct tiling values are for the Iray shader presets like wood, stucco, concrete, asphalt etc please?

Whenever I apply these to a surface with the default tiling of 1/1 they come out stretched and blurred. I can adjust the tiling values to make them look better, but it'd be nice to know what values will make them look exactly as intended.

Thanks

Richard Haseltine

That will depend on the situation - the tiles should usually, if the surface is UVed proportionately, be in the ratio of length to width of the surface and shoudl be high enough to give the number of repeats the physical size requires.

tl155180

Thanks Richard. Thats what I would've expected but its not how its working out in practice. What if the surface is not UVed proportionately? Is there any way to work out what the correct ratios should be?

Pretty much all of the surfaces I've tried these on in my product collection just default the shaders to a tiling of 1-1, which is way off what it should be. So far I've just had to guess by eye what a more appropriate tiling would be and it ranges from 2-2 up to around 20-20.

Richard Haseltine

Well, if you know how big the tile is, and you have a rough idea of the size of the Surface in the UVs, just set the repeats so that the surface's share of them will give the right size. There isn't going to be a readily calculable method (you could use a script of some kind to get the UV area, the physical area, and given the size of the tile calculate the number of tiles - but it would be a pain to write (at best).

mjc1016

Eyeballing it is pretty much the best way  I know of...because, no two pieces of wood look exactly alike, it gives you enough lattitude to give it the look YOU think looks good.
 

And depending on things like image size and object size 2x2 up to 20x20 is 'right'...even higher than 20x20 is usable.

tl155180

Hmm, well I have no idea how big the tile is or the size of the area I'm trying to cover (other than eyeballing it), so I think mjc1016 is probably right then - I'll just have to go by best approximation. Thats a bit disappointing.

It appears to be mainly the Nvidia MDL examples that are causing the most problems, because the leather shader, for example, works fine without having to adjust tiling. I hope the Iray shaders available in the store are going to act more like the Daz uber shaders and less like the fiddly Nvidia ones

Thanks both for your help.

tl155180

It seems that the shaders will apply more or less as intended to a 1m square primitive, but I have no idea how to work out how large a surface, such as the ceiling of a set, is by comparison to that, so thats not much help either.

JimmyC_2009

DSON format can usually be read in any text editor, unless they are compressed, and then you need WinZIP or WinRAR or simialr to open them.   The MDL are not compressed.

Do you mean the size of the texture map used?   You can find them here : C:\Program Files\DAZ 3D\DAZStudio4\shaders\iray\resources

Most of them are porcedural shaders and don;t use an image, but the wood ones do.

tl155180

JimmyC_2009 said:

DSON format can usually be read in any text editor, unless they are compressed, and then you need WinZIP or WinRAR or simialr to open them.   The MDL are not compressed.

Do you mean the size of the texture map used?   You can find them here : C:\Program Files\DAZ 3D\DAZStudio4\shaders\iray\resources

Most of them are porcedural shaders and don;t use an image, but the wood ones do.

Thanks Jimmy, I didn't realise they were there. Unfortunately it doesn't help me like I thought it would because it turns out I'm a dunce with textures and was thinking about things in totally the wrong way lol.

Yeah, its the ones that use an image that are irritating me. As Richard and mjc1016 say, unless you know the size of the surface you're trying to cover its really just a guessing game as to what tiling size you need. I thought there'd be a more precise method than trial and error, but at least its not just me thats having to do it by eye. Thats comforting at least!

Richard Haseltine

I would apply a 1 tile copy to a plane primitive and resize it until it looked right - though for things with real worl sizes, like bricks, you should be able to get it more precise.

tl155180

Richard Haseltine said:

I would apply a 1 tile copy to a plane primitive and resize it until it looked right - though for things with real worl sizes, like bricks, you should be able to get it more precise.

I've tried doing that but the problem I then run into is translating that information to the object I'm actually trying to apply the shader to. For instance, I'm trying to apply the 'Stucco' shader to the ceilings of the "A Bright Loft" set (http://www.daz3d.com/a-bright-loft). I applied Stucco to a 1m square plane with tiling at default 1/1 and it looked pretty close to what the texture maps suggest, but then I don't know the relative sizes of the ceilings compared to that 1m plane in order to translate it over.

Is there a simple way to work out the surface area of an object in a scene without going outside of DS?

Richard Haseltine

You could measure the width and length with Measure Metrics, or by creating a 1m plane, scaling it on twoa xes to fit, and reading the scales as cm. Assessing how much of the unit UV square it took would require looking at the template - you can do that in the UV view mode in DS, but you can;'t measure there.

tl155180

Richard Haseltine said:

You could measure the width and length with Measure Metrics, or by creating a 1m plane, scaling it on twoa xes to fit, and reading the scales as cm. Assessing how much of the unit UV square it took would require looking at the template - you can do that in the UV view mode in DS, but you can;'t measure there.

Thanks Richard, I appreciate the amount of thought you've given it but thats a lot of work when you consider how many corners and bends there are in the surfaces (theres no way I'm going to buy Measure Metrics just to solve a shaders problem) and it seems like its still going to be an approximation in the end either way. If theres no inbuilt mechanic in DS to measure these things or tile accurately, then I might as well just play it by eye with trial and error and save myself the extra hassle.

I'm grateful for the work-around suggestions though.

tl155180

I tell you what, I'm not very happy with this A Bright Loft set I bought. There are needless glaring gaps in the geometry all over the place, some of the textures do not align properly and one of the beams goes straight through a window and can't be moved independently from the others.

Don't Daz do any quality checking on these PA items? It doesn't seem like it sometimes...

Richard Haseltine

If you find issues please open a support ticket so they can be checked and if necessary the product or DS (if it's a bug there) fixed.

JQP

Bit of necromancy, but it worked for me: use Sketchup. I was having the same problem, how to get a tile shader (as in, bathroom tile) to tile consistently across the planes I was using for walls, floors, etc. Couldn't wrap my old artist's brain around the math. So I figured I'd try it in Sketchup, and got lucky. I just build what I wanted in Sketchup, and textured it with a material made from the image in the Daz shader. I tweaked the geometry so that it looked right, i.e., no tiles cut into thirds. I exported it as an FBX, imported it into DS, and applied the shader. Lo and behold, it just "works." I don't know if it's repeatable, but I was pleasantly surprised at how easy it was.