"PM 2Ring" <nomail@nomail> wrote:
> I don't think smoothing is necessary for bricks, since you want some
> roughness, but it does mean you need to keep your triangles small to avoid
> funny-looking artifacts.
I think I'd have to agree, after playing with this for a bit.

> That's a very minimal texture there, Bill. :) I guess you want to avoid use
> of normals, since they slow things down, and tend to look the same at all
> distances.
Well, it's only a test render, really! Try slapping that sandstone texture
on it... Actually, I might experiment with micronormals too - they could
help hide the triangles on lower-res meshes.

> Also, how long is your parsing time? I guess it won't be too bad, if you're
> not making hundreds of different bricks. Maybe you can save the mesh to a
> file? See
> #macro HFCreate_ () in "shapes.inc" for an example.
Parsing time is pretty big actually, and peak memory was over 50MB. I think
saving the meshes to files would be the best way to proceed for larger
scenes! I've found that no more than 10-20 different bricks make for
sufficient variation in a wall.

> > All the parameters required can be passed to the macro, except the pigment
> > function (I couldn't get it to work for some reason). The macro therefore
> > assumes a pre-declared function called fn_brick_surface.
> I have vague memories of having problems with something like that, too.
> However the manual says:
Well, I'm passing the function down a couple of nested macros, and it
doesn't seem to like the third handover! But it doesn't really matter if
meshes are declared before use.

Bill

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