Rendering Carpet

Hello, does anyone know how to get the texture right in carpet? I am using images as the carpet as it is specified carpet but i can't seem to get the texture right - can anybody out there help me??

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Permalink Reply by Render Plus on September 15, 2011 at 6:39am

Can you upload an example image, using the image icon on the toolbar above the editor, so we can see what you mean.

If you are getting a checkerboard effect because the manufacturers images do not intersect properly, then you may need to use some external program like crazy bump to make the images repeatable.

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Permalink Reply by Warwick Flint on September 15, 2011 at 7:15am

it's not so much a checkerboard, more that it appears flat and has little or no texture - as per image

[EDIT - ADH - inserted imaged into post]

Attachments:

Master Room.png, 1.7 MB

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Permalink Reply by Render Plus on September 15, 2011 at 7:31am

Did the image have texture in SketchUp.

Can you upload the underlying image?

One "trick" is that te resolution of the underlying image needs to be about 50% to 200% of the resolution of the image in the final rendering. (e.g. If you are rendering the above image to 1200 pixels width, then the carpet itself is about 1500 pixels wide, so the image for the carpet should be between 750 and 3,000 pixels wide. Otherwise it get expanded or shrunk too much during rendering and loses detail like texture.

If it is too big, or too small, us a paint program to resize it to 1,500 pixels. The paint program will do a better job of averaging the pixels, before rendering, than the renderer will do while rendering.

We have a similar problem with furniture manufacturers who send us swatches scanned at 300 DPI (dots per inch). A 4' panel fabric, which may only be 500 pixels wide in the final rendering is trying to get its detail from 14,400 pixels of detail in the original image. (48" x 300 pixels per inch) It works better if we lower the resolution of the fabric image before using it.

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Permalink Reply by Render Plus on September 15, 2011 at 7:33am

Another thought is that there is a setting in IRender nXt for maximum image resolution, (on the "Special" setup tab.) The default is 1,000 pixels. We added this because many SketchUp user include very high resolution images in their models which are just slowing down the rendering too much. If there is texture in the original image which is not appearing, you might try setting this value to 2,000 or 3,000 pixels to see if that helps.

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Permalink Reply by EliBjr on September 15, 2011 at 4:52pm

Well, the only thing I can say is if you want a good carpet rendering MUST start with a good carpet sample. My thought is this: I would take the pattern on your floor and map it out in sketchup with different shapes so that each shape is "pickable". You may have to group or make componets of similar shapes. Then each shape could be selected with its own material.

For example, the folowing image is cropped from the from "Imaging Registration Rm1028" which can be found at:

http://api.ning.com/files/3A*HXPbBcnFqv1eVxjzWwZctQCTWg5hbgoYzIutsZ...

___

Unless a client tells me otherwise, I like to go to Altas Carpet Mills. They have the best textures for carpet because the resolution is great and the image is extremely sharp. I go to a carpet that I want to use so that I get about a square like this:

___

I then take it to Paint.Net and trim out the square and save it as a ".jpg."

like this : (note the amount of texture and color variation and sharpness in the original texture!) Remember if the texture already looks this good the renderer can only make it better!

Then I can go to Sketchup and use it as a new material. With a texture like this, I figure this should be about a 1 foot square piece that I am looking at. And I make sure Sketchup keeps the proportions locked so it does not distort the original texture:

From here you can then take those shapes or zones on your floor and and them pick your new material to "color' them:

This is the raw sketchup image...It already looks good:

Then right click on the material to edit the material in IRender: then go to the "texture" tab:. I, then, keep the color strength to 1.00 and go with "autobump" since there is enough texture to make it real. I make the bump setting to at least 3.5.

After this I then hit render. Then you will notice all the dark spots become valleys and all the light spot become peaks. Eventhough at the micro level that may not be the right profile, from a distance of 6' from the floor this WILL look like a real carpet and not just a carpet texture.:

You can enhance this further by upping the contrast of a weak original sample in your image editor that you linked with Sketchup... or by maxing out your bump map setting to 5:0 in iRender. The above is set to 3.8 with a standard HDRI light setting. I hope that helps. Try it! Also in your Sketchup material editor you can tint your carpet and save it as a different color so you can greate carpet tiles. The second color can have a different bump setting as the first to get a checkerboard like tile pattern. This can also be used to create a field and an accent as you show in your image. I hope that helps.

Al & Rich again, Thank you for a great program!

Elibjr

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Permalink Reply by Warwick Flint on September 16, 2011 at 12:13am

Thanks guys, will try it and upload a new image for you to see.....

EliBjr said:

Well, the only thing I can say is if you want a good carpet rendering MUST start with a good carpet sample. My thought is this: I would take the pattern on your floor and map it out in sketchup with different shapes so that each shape is "pickable". You may have to group or make componets of similar shapes. Then each shape could be selected with its own material.

For example, the folowing image is cropped from the from "Imaging Registration Rm1028" which can be found at:

http://api.ning.com/files/3A*HXPbBcnFqv1eVxjzWwZctQCTWg5hbgoYzIutsZ...
_____
Unless a client tells me otherwise, I like to go to Altas Carpet Mills. They have the best textures for carpet because the resolution is great and the image is extremely sharp. I go to a carpet that I want to use so that I get about a square like this:
_____

I then take it to Paint.Net and trim out the square and save it as a ".jpg."

like this : (note the amount of texture and color variation and sharpness in the original texture!) Remember if the texture already looks this good the renderer can only make it better!

Then I can go to Sketchup and use it as a new material. With a texture like this, I figure this should be about a 1 foot square piece that I am looking at. And I make sure Sketchup keeps the proportions locked so it does not distort the original texture:

From here you can then take those shapes or zones on your floor and and them pick your new material to "color' them:

This is the raw sketchup image...It already looks good:

Then right click on the material to edit the material in IRender: then go to the "texture" tab:. I, then, keep the color strength to 1.00 and go with "autobump" since there is enough texture to make it real. I make the bump setting to at least 3.5.

After this I then hit render. Then you will notice all the dark spots become valleys and all the light spot become peaks. Eventhough at the micro level that may not be the right profile, from a distance of 6' from the floor this WILL look like a real carpet and not just a carpet texture.:

You can enhance this further by upping the contrast of a weak original sample in your image editor that you linked with Sketchup... or by maxing out your bump map setting to 5:0 in iRender. The above is set to 3.8 with a standard HDRI light setting. I hope that helps. Try it! Also in your Sketchup material editor you can tint your carpet and save it as a different color so you can greate carpet tiles. The second color can have a different bump setting as the first to get a checkerboard like tile pattern. This can also be used to create a field and an accent as you show in your image. I hope that helps.

Al & Rich again, Thank you for a great program!

Elibjr