Masking Materials

[SkiSouth]

In 3dsMax you can pretty much do anything you want in creating materials, and I will give accurender a nod, it has strong materials also. Just posted a rendering in the gallery for a little bank. The brick is too "regular" if you will. Thinking of applying a percentage mask to to the color, and would love to add a decent mortar bump map. Anyone have clues or been down this road already and can tell me what to expect?

[mjfarrell]

I would suggest take a photo of some brickwork

that you do like and use that in the material definition.

[SkiSouth]

I guess I'm looking for more of a work around. Think "dirt"- how things weather. In 3ds, you can assign a addon filter to "dirty" a surface and add age, or easily add a bump map/mask for variations.

In accurender, I'm stll looking for the key solution where the mask can be the size of the building wall, where the repeating pattern is still only the little 18" cube you see in the material definition block.

Same with parking lots. Need traffic wear shown, but without having to resort to Photoshop - you know underlay a mask again.

Anyway, I understand the concept of real photos and repeating patterns and will continue to explore that avenue. Thanks for the suggestion though....