Realistic walls

[EDDY100]

Been plying with a new way of printing realistic walls from photos.

Results look promising, this is printed from an actual castle wall picture.

[55020]

That looks great.  Are you able to pass on any details of the processes involved in producing a useable stl file?

 

 

Steve

[EDDY100]

If you check out my YouTube channel, I will be making a tutorial in the next day or 2 on the process of making this. All free to use software just a bit of knowledge needed.

Eddy

[55020]

Thanks Eddy, now subbed and waiting with baited breath.  I'll head off and watch your other vids.

 

 

Steve

[Quarryscapes]

Looks very promising indeed, looking forward to seeing how it's done

[EDDY100]

I have put 2 videos on my YouTube channel how I made the walls.

They are aimed at the railway modeller who would like to learn a new technique.

If you are an expert please don't comment saying you should do this and that.

If you reckon they are no good please make your own video's and post.

For the average modeller please enjoy and if you need any help please comment on the tube.

Part 1

Part 2

[DGO]

52 minutes ago, EDDY100 said:

I have put 2 videos on my YouTube channel how I made the walls.

They are aimed at the railway modeller who would like to learn a new technique.

If you are an expert please don't comment saying you should do this and that.

If you reckon they are no good please make your own video's and post.

For the average modeller please enjoy and if you need any help please comment on the tube.

Part 1

Part 2

I'd not count myself as an expert but am pretty experienced in 3D work and I think you covered things pretty well, a couple of things that might help:

Subdivide - this takes each grid square and divides it horizontally and vertically into 2, so if you start with a 100 x 100 grid and subdivide you go, 200, 400, 800 and so on, for best results on a complicated surface like brick or stone you want a grid that gives you the same number of squares in the grid as you have pixels in the displacement map or a multiple of that, so if your image is 1024 x 768 pixels you really want at least a 1024 x 768 grid then each pixel will be assigned to one grid. The best option is to start with one grid square per pixel and then sub divide until you get a good result.

Vary the amount of displacement to get different effects,  in your video you were working in meters and so with the 0.1 setting for displacement you got a very dramatic up to 10cm displacement, for an old ruined wall this looks really dramatic, but you can use the same files but chance the displacement to say 0.01 and get a far more modern looking wall.

The above should also work very well for creating natural looking rock faces, tree bark, wood grain and so on, but the smaller the scale the less effective the results for smaller items like bark 

[EDDY100]

Thanks for that DGO. One for me to try.

One thing I can't work out is scaling. 

If I make a 2m square, brick it and export it as a STL its size has no relation to the 2m square.

The really rough brickwork is what was intended to catch peoples attention.

Edited May 10, 2022 by EDDY100

[EDDY100]

Tried your theory of one pixel per square. I have a pretty fast CPU and Blender locked up so unless I halve the squares per pixel on a good high res pic that is a no go.

 

[DGO]

1 minute ago, EDDY100 said:

Tried your theory of one pixel per square. I have a pretty fast CPU and Blender locked up so unless I halve the squares per pixel on a good high res pic that is a no go.

 

Yeah I probably run a slightly higher spec machine, 16GB of ram is a bare minimum for getting really good results with displacement mapping, 32GB is better the process is very effective but it's also a memory hog, you could try halving the resolution of the image to 2048 x 2048 or even 1024 x 1024, you loose a small amount of the fine detail but when you print at a small scale you loose that anyway

 

By the way I'm not sure how to do it in Blender or if you can do it, but try creating your structures actual size in blender and exporting as an stl then importing the stl back in and scaling it to whatever scale you want before exporting it out for printing 

[EDDY100]

Enough power there m8.

So I have worked out the scale thing.

Work in meters in Blender and export STL scale x 10.

So a 2 meter cube in Blender imported into Prusa slicer equals 20 mm cube.

I can work with that as it is a constant measurement.

Edited May 10, 2022 by EDDY100

[DGO]

Odd, down to different software possibly, you could see how much of the PC resources Blender is using when you try to diisplacemnt map, every package has good and bad bits maybe Blender doesn't like large meshes, I just noticed you are using a 64 bit map, Blender reccomends using 16 or 32 Bit which would reduce at least the file size for the image 

[EDDY100]

That was a stock photo and the results are good so I will just use the default settings, don't want to make to much work for a simple wall.

KISS keep it simple

Edited May 10, 2022 by EDDY100

[monkeysarefun]

Cool to see you got it all worked out, great results.

Edited May 11, 2022 by monkeysarefun

[EDDY100]

After much research and head scratching I think I have cracked the method of any wall, any texture, any window style, any scale. It is quiet involved using SketchUp and Blender but results are I think close to the real thing. I just need better painting skills. I will be making videos on this technique and posting on my channel if anyone fancies a go.

My YouTube Channel

 

[monkeysarefun]

Brilliant stuff - and all done with freeware (assuming you use sketchup 2017..)

 

Just mix  a bottle of goo with some light and out comes brickwalls. Can you get more scratchbuilt than that?

 

As for your painting issue, I should get my 3D prints that were done on a  full colour 3D printer  back today so I'll post them in the appropriate thread,  just to show what an extra $99,000USD over the cost of an Anycubic/Elegoo printer gives  you!

 

 

Edited May 17, 2022 by monkeysarefun

[EDDY100]

Cheers Monkey, yes all done with freeware. I did try adding windows in SketchUp but importing high res STLs is a pain so its a combo of design walls and windows in SketchUp. Render walls in Blender and combine the 2 best of both worlds. I will be making a couple of vids on how to in the near future.

I could of done it all in SketchUp but paying $30 for a plugin to cut holes in walls is not where I am at. Anyone watching one of my  how to vids and gets told you need to spend $30 before you start would turn people off.

 

Eddy

So we having a print off my £180 Mars2 and £1 acrylic paints V your $99,000 prints😀😉

Edited May 17, 2022 by EDDY100

[EDDY100]

Some test pics, some work some don't. Resin is Anycubic Eco resin @£23 ltr.

Make a FDM frame and clad it with high quality walls, cheap as chips.

Videos on my channel on how to do this in SketchUp.

Plenty of how to vids on my channel.

[monkeysarefun]

1 hour ago, EDDY100 said:

 

I could of done it all in SketchUp but paying $30 for a plugin to cut holes in walls is not where I am at

Hey mate I assume your talking about the booltools add on? I stumped up the cash but find I  rarely use it because I keep forgetting I've got it! I do all my hole  cutting using the  built in intersect command.

 

I draw a window sized cube and place it in my wall where the  window is to be with a bit sticking out either side as something to grab, then select both  wall and cube, and  right click 'select intersect with selection' It cuts a hole in the wall using the cubes sides as the cutter. You have to delete the remains of  the cube but the result should be a cube sized hole..

 

Forgive me if I've got your meaning wrong and you know all about this already!

 

[EDDY100]

I did use that method but is was not great, if you did not get it just right it would not work. Yep that booltools was the plugin. I found SketchUp does not handle high Res textures well even Blender slows down when applying the final subdivision.

[monkeysarefun]

1 hour ago, EDDY100 said:

Some test pics, some work some don't. Resin is Anycubic Eco resin @£23 ltr.

Make a FDM frame and clad it with high quality walls, cheap as chips.

Videos on my channel on how to do this in SketchUp.

Plenty of how to vids on my channel.

Great stuff. I think blender has some randomiser abilities, maybe a modifier, I forget now, which may help eliminate the slightly  repetitive patterns on a couple of the walls, but none the less they are great..

 

Sure beats sticking gluey  strips of paper or card to make wooden planked walls - people who complain that resin printing is messy forget how messy much  of 'traditional' modelling can be!

 

 

It took me ages to figure out how to do this about 18 months ago, you've got it sorted in no time at all. 

[monkeysarefun]

2 minutes ago, EDDY100 said:

found SketchUp does not handle high Res textures well even Blender slows down when applying the final subdivision.

I know all about that! I created some carved sandstone buttresses by using photogrammetry. Thought I'd import them as an STL into SketchUp to add to a model, took about 2 hours for the import to complete, and that's on an alienware laptop that's made for performance graphic stuff!

[EDDY100]

Quote

Great stuff. I think blender has some randomiser abilities, maybe a modifier,

I have yet to fine a good solution to this problem, randomising brickwork messes up the brick courses and that is worse than repetition. I have spent too long already on this technique and I need to move on.

Quote

STL into SketchUp to add to a model, took about 2 hours

You must be patient, if I have to wait a minute or 2, its too long😉

Edited May 17, 2022 by EDDY100

[EDDY100]

New 3 part video series on how to design and model realistic model railway buildings. Its on my YouTube channel now.

My channel

[EDDY100]

This is my final proof of concept building. Building designed in SketchUp, textures applied in Blender and assembled in PrusaSlicer. Roof is FDM printed the rest is resin. Window glazing bars are .2mm, which came out well. I know this technique works well now so I will move on to some cranes I started some weeks ago. Check out my YouTube channel for some easy to follow How To Videos. All programs I use are freeware so it will cost nothing to have a go. Eddy

 

How To Videos Here