"Chris R" <car### [at] comcastnet> wrote:
> I took a little break developing the brick library to start a scene using it.
> In all of my code-development life, I have found that creating libraries has to
> be a constant interplay of creating the abstraction, using it, and then fine
> tuning it for new use cases.
>
> This scene shows a corner of a brick garden wall using the English Bond layout.
> There are a total of 4 isosurfaces: one for the bricks on each wall, and one for
> the mortar on each wall.
>
> The library system takes care of generating the isosurface functions based on
> various inputs, including:
>    - Wall dimensions (length, number of courses, half-brick thickness)
>    - Wall end types (flush or corner)
>    - Brick and mortar sizes
>    - Brick shape function
>
> The system then generates a dictionary called a "Layout" that includes functions
> that given an <x,y,z> coordinate figure out the origin (left, bottom, front
> corner) of the brick/mortar containing that point, the size of the brick, and an
> ordinal index into the wall for that brick.  The system uses these to generate
> the isosurface functions, but they are also available for the modeler to use for
> other purposes.
>
> While creating this scene I decided to add some jitter to the brick locations to
> keep them from lining up in an abnormally perfect way.  Originally I took the
> isosurface function generated by the system for the bricks and wrapped it in
> another function that added some noise to the position, but used the brick
> origin functions in the layout so that the noise would be the same for all
> points in the brick.  I quickly discovered that I needed to apply this same
> jitter to the mortar isosurface function so the mortar joints would line up
> correctly, and I needed it for the texture utility that ensures that bricks can
> have random textures, but a single brick texture is smooth and consistent.  So,
> I decided to add jitter as a first class element of the system.
>
> There is still a fair amount of modeling code beyond calls to the system macros
> for this scene.  Most of it is adapting the system's supplied brick shape
> functions and mortar joint functions by adding textural noise to them, including
> the cracks, as well as defining the textures for the bricks and the mortar.
>
> I plan to develop this scene further and keep it as an example when I eventually
> publish the brick library code.  I'm still working out the best way to do that.
> I am finding I have to clean up a lot of library code I use so that it doesn't
> end up pulling in my entire POV modeling tree.
>
>
> -- Chris R.
> -- Happily rendering since 2014

Looking quite realistic so far, very good!

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