Scaling images for renderings

[Doug]

The images that I import to Revit have a block pattern to them. Example, Owens Corning Cultures Stone. How do I scale them so they don't have a dark square around the stone pattern?
Is there a formula to the image size?


Doug

[trombe]

Doug,
I have just seen your post and am probably going through the same thing.

In NZ we have local market materials , none of which are iside the Revit contect libraries. No problem, since Accurender seems to be able to make your own pretty easily.
My problem is similar to yours.

I took a photo with a digital camera, of a timber weatherboard ( siding in the US) wall - this one is called ex 250 x 25 mm Rusticated in profile.
I marked the wall with tape so I had a perimeter of 1 metre x 1 metre and took the shot 2 metres away for the subject, at right angles to the face of the wall.

Inside an editing program that came with my scanner, I cropped the image to the 1 metre square limits of the black tape and saved as a jpeg.

I opened Accurender to make a new Material , use Default Gray and imported the image of the weatherboards.
Mucking around with the X and Y limits produced a range of scaled weatherboard effects relative to my rendered model and the overall effect is excellent - much better than I was expecting.


The problem is however, that I cannot get rid of a grey / gray box around my image map, and when I change the X and or Y limits for scaling, it either changes the final rendered view scale so that the weatherboard widths bear no relationship to reality, or the real image profiles, colour and textures have gone.
I always end up with the gray Cube limits ( 500 / 1000 / 3000 mm etc.) making up the Tile, showing in the render.

I assume that the process works that whatever the tile map is, is duplicated (Mirrored if you use the tick box in Accurender) in all of the Cartesian axes..... so it is probably crucial to edit your image map carefully so that when the 500mm Tile Cube is mirrored about its X and Y positive and negative axes, the pattern is perfectly replicated and in synchronous harmony with itself.


I would love to know how to get around this problem because until I do, any Rendered work for me is just playtime and cannot be used for real wrok, since there are no local materials for wall cladding and almost none for local roofing cladding.

This part of the web site seems to get low interest for posts so maybe I have to ask the main forum, but first, maybe someone will let us both know where we are going wrong.
I have read the Accurender help sections of course.

Attached image is WIP for my first image map
cheers
trombe

[beegee]

Rendering questions are best answered by the rendering gurus and I'm not one, but I noticed you are implying that your jpeg is scaled to 1.0 m x 1.0 m. Accurender's scale factor is based on decimal feet.

I don't know if this could be contributing to the problem or not.

[trombe]

Hi,
sorry BeeGee but I am confused about the decimal feet thing.
My system is running in metric mode ( units set to mm for me).
The help sections elude to the improted map being same as whatever the system is running ?
Also, sorry, what is a "decimal foot " ? is that the same as an imperial foot of 12" , with its metric conversion being 25.4 mm per inch ? , or is there something else ?
Tried to get a definition of it on the web, out of dictionaries with no success.
I assumed from a comment that if 8" = 0.667, well actually, 0.666 recurring, then that is just another way of expressing a standard imperial / normal foot......
Also read the latest Accustudio tutorial on bricks with an Oz and kiwi slant.
clarify please ?
cheers
trombe

[bclarch]

I'm not up to speed on the material mapping aspects of your question but I can tell you that your assumptions about decimal feet are correct. The phrase refers to showing inches as decimal portions of one foot. 10'-6" = 10.5', 2'-4" = 2.333', 3'-2" = 3.167', etc.

[beegee]

What I was suggesting was that your scale input , x and y, for the 1000 mm x 1000 mm material image shoud be 3.2808398 x 3.2808398 when converted to decimal feet units.
The material mapping part of Accurender works in decimal feet regardless of the units set for Revit display.

[trombe]

thanks guys.

It does not change things unfortunately.
An input of the (decimal) fraction of a metre as Begee says results in 1 and a bit weatherboards over the height of the wall surface which is 2.9 m high odd.
In either case, I managed to get a satisfactory scale which read OK during experiments.
The problem is still the gray borders appearing in both X and Y, rather than a seamless map over the surface.
I have mailed AccuStudio and awiat any sort of reply , but am still keen on getting any and all informaiton on image mapping anybody has ( in Revit),
Are there any dudes out there who have mapped horizontal elements from digicam images please ?
cheers
trombe

[beegee]

I just want to be sure I'm understanding this correctly.

1> You have a bmp or jpg image of real weatherboards, cropped to show a real world size of 1000 mm x 1000 mm.
2>In the accurender dialogue box, you pull down the material menu and selected create new material using default grey.
3> You selected image maps and browsed to your jpg/bitmap image.
4> Under the y scale factor ( leaving the proportion lock locked ) you entered the figure 3.2808398. The x figure will then automatically adjust.

If that's what you're done and it doesn't work, then I don't have any idea from here.

[trombe]

Thanks to you all for help with the scaling of custom image maps.
I have resolved the problem after a dig in the ribs from a kind person reminding me about the basics .
The problem was the image size, was smaller than the canvas size so when imported into Revit, there was an inherent border which was not obvious as a border to me, in Accurender, being the first time.
All is well and the results are well good enough even at 100 dpi.

cheers
trombe

[funkman]

further to these queries, and somewhat related...

I created a rendering and didnt export it at the time of creating. Now I want to export it but the expot button cannot be selected.. Does anyone have any ideas how to export this rendering.

[beegee]

Select the rendered image from Renderings in the project browser, Then File, Export, Image.

[funkman]

excellent - thanks !