I have found a website that has some materials that I would like to add to my materials files. They are jpeg and they are about the same size as the ones in the program file. I have tried to load them into into the program folder of materials but I cannot find them when I try to use them in a drawing. I must not be doing It the way I am supposed to. Is it possible, and how if it is?
  Myron  TC16Pro

It's a little more complicated than that. You cannot use an image directly as a Material. If I'm reading your mind correctly, to get the effect you want you'll have to open the Material Editor and create a new Material using "Wrapped image" (or, preferably, "Wrapped filtered image") Pattern, navigating to your image file in the File name window. You'll also need to specify a Reflectance (try "Matte" for starters, with both parameters set to 1.0) and a Wrapping mode. Wrapping is the most difficult to handle; what kind you use and what values you assign to the various parameters all depend upon the size and shape of the 3D object to which you'll assign this new Material. Somebody here will help with that if you post 1) a .tcw containing that object, and 2) the .jpg.

Henry H

I Appreciate all the help I can get. I have just started tinkering with the materials palette, it could be more than I am ready for. I have been working with the brick and I have changed one of the wood floor patterns to look a little like Lap siding but I have not found a material pattern for a wall that has some stone work on it. I have found some patterns but I cannot figure out how to put it on the walls. I have sent a house plan and the jpg for the material. Around my area we use some brick and some stone on the front and side the rest of the house. If TC has stone patterns I have not found them. I am not sure I did the attachments correct
  Myron TC16 Pro

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Around my area we use some brick and some stone on the front and side the rest of the house. If TC has stone patterns I have not found them. I am not sure I did the attachments correct
  Myron TC16 Pro

See my message in another topic, it uses  the "Paving" Pattern shader to create a stone section in a wall.

http://forums.turbocad.com/index.php/topic,554.msg3029.html#msg3029

edit: delete the two walls on the right-side of picture and the Wall Style in the component wall (left-side) will work better.

Thanks Henry for the info on the wrapped Image for materials. The wife has Paint Shop Pro and she showed me how to make the patterns seamless and I think I managed to make one material work. Now I have 20 more to go.
   Myron

My 2¢ with your house using the component wall mentioned previously. I changed your drawings Units from "ft" to "in" so that the materials I had on hand would work, otherwise they would come out too large.



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Thanks John, that looks like what I am after. I have a few  questions if you don't mind. 1) for the roof shingles, If I wrap using the auto axis and apply to Z plane will that keep the shingles on the top of the roof and not on the facia. 2) I see from your rendering that you have light colored shingles, the ones supplied by TC are all dark, I have not noticed a place that I could change the colors if I made a new material. Is this possible. 3) For the walls to have two different materials did you skin the wall with two solids and then apply the material. I have just started working with materials and I think I will have a lot more questions, the help file does not help much. I have about 20 different materials that I have made seamless, Is it taboo to post them here if others may want them?
         Myron TC16

1) for the roof shingles, If I wrap using the auto axis and apply to Z plane will that keep the shingles on the top of the roof and not on the fascia.
My knowledge on wrapping really sucks. Henry may be able to answer this better than me.

2) I see from your rendering that you have light colored shingles, the ones supplied by TC are all dark, I have not noticed a place that I could change the colors if I made a new material. Is this possible.
I used a Wrapped Roof Tile" to create the tiles on the roof. The materials in the Shingles category are from image files. You can brighten them up by increasing the "Ambient factor" in the Matte shader.

3) For the walls to have two different materials did you skin the wall with two solids and then apply the material.
No. I used a Wall Style; this is in the Style Manager palette. This particular style is made up of 4 components. Each component can have a material assigned to it. The "Paving" material in the Testing\Displacement-1 category was used to simulate a flagstone wall pattern.

Hope this helps somewhat.



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for the roof shingles, If I wrap using the auto axis and apply to Z plane will that keep the shingles on the top of the roof and not on the facia.

Unless you take special pains to confine a material to selected facets of an object, the program will apply a designated material to the entire object. Therefore IMO it's best to draw the roof and the facia as separate objects, which makes it easier to apply different materials to them. Make the roof itself maybe an inch thick or less. The fascia can be created as a Roof object, too, with a greater thickness (maybe five inches) and placed directly below the roof itself.

Easiest way to apply shingles to the roof is with a custom material using "Wrapped roof tiles" Pattern (with the various parameters adjusted to your liking) and "Layout" Wrapping (with the various parameters left at the default values). The shingles will be aligned with the edges of the roof, even if it's a fairly complex design.

Henry H

I really appreciate all of the information I have been recieving, I have been copying all of this information so I can put it a notebook, The help files do not help. Is there a source that explains what all these settings do. I have noticed that once you create a new material and apply it to a wall if you reselect the wall and change any setting of the material it also changes the librairy material. Do you have to create new material for every wall or is there way to keep the original unchanged. If I right click in the materials palatte on the menu what do the choices "Set Material", "Rebuild Thumbnails", & "Save Materials" do for the materials.
   If you get tired of me asking so many questions just let me know.
   Myron  TC16

Is there a source that explains what all these settings do.

Yup. Click the green button shown in the attached screenshot.

Henry H

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re: If I right click in the materials palatte on the menu what do the choices "Set Material", "Rebuild Thumbnails", & "Save Materials" do for the materials.

Set Material — If you have an object(s) selected in the drawing, right-click on a material in the palette, then choose "Set Material". The selected objects should now have that material. Use "Set None" to remove a material. This won't work on an object whose facets have different materials. You can also click on a material icon and drag that material to an object. If "Drag on Facet" is checked, you can drag a material to a facet (an acceptable facet will light up).

Rebuild Thumbnails — You can rebuild the thumbnails for selected materials in the palette or for the current category that is showing. I would recommend to not use "for All", it could be a while. :-)) TurboCAD will use the last "Preview" settings to generate the thumbnails. This will save you from creating a thumbnail one at a time in the Materials Editor.

Save Materials — You can save all or some of your current materials to a separate file. Generally this can be used as a backup or to share materials with someone. Use "Load Materials" to bring in materials from another source. If you use "Restore Default Materials", it will overwrite your current materials, so "Save Materials" first if you have an urge to Restore.

Thank you for all who have helped. I have sent what I have so far, but I have yet to figure out how to do a brick soldier course to work for my wainscoat cap and top rows of brick. Also I cannot get the lap siding to look like I want. Does anyone have any suggestions?
   Myron TC16

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Also I cannot get the lap siding to look like I want. Does anyone have any suggestions?

Looks as if you have several different materials for the siding. Basically it looks pretty good to me except for the difference in "width" of the boards on different objects. What Pattern and what Wrapping are you using?

Henry H

I Could not figure out something for siding so I skinned the wall and then sliced 1/2" areas to be the lap part. I then applied black to these areas. I am not happy with the way it turned out. If  I zoom in close all of the seams show up, as I zoom out the seams disappear. I am working on creating a pattern for siding. I am also unable to create a brick soldier course.
   Myron TC16

I Could not figure out something for siding

If the attached image looks like a reasonable starting point for your siding (colors and scale are easily adjusted), then open the attached .tcw. Select a wall, open its Properties page, go to Wall Sides|Right, and look at the properties of the "Clapboard_Cream3.1" material.

Creating a new Material based upon this, with modified properties, is simple: In the Material Editor, click the "New Material" button to the right of the window in which you see "Clapboard_Cream3.1," type a new name in the "New Material" dialog which appears and click OK. Change any of the material parameters, in any of the five categories appearing in the left-hand window of the Material Editor, click "Apply," then click OK. The Material Editor will close and your new material will be available for use.

Henry H

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I am also unable to create a brick soldier course.

Are you looking for something like the Common bond used in Wrapped Brick Bonds or do you want to insert a single row at a particular point? I think you could to use the "Stack" bond with the Width and Depth sizes switched and place it on an appropriately narrow object, so only one row appears.

I believe tat I tried the stack bond. I got it to work if I applied it on a wall that runs side to side. When I tried front to back I failed. I tried the height, weight, and depth, but it seemed that whatever I used for depth there was no effect. I want a single row that can be used as a rowlock on a wainscoat and a stack that can be used as a soldier course.
   Myron

I have been working with the brick materials to see what each of the settings do to my patterns. I can tell when the height  and width values change but I have been unable to make the depth of my brick change at all. I have tried from a setting if 100 all the way to .001 and I see no change in the pattern. I have tried it in ST Layout and some of the other possibilities available. what does it take to effect the depth setting?
Myron

I have been working with the brick materials to see what each of the settings do to my patterns. I can tell when the height  and width values change but I have been unable to make the depth of my brick change at all. I have tried from a setting if 100 all the way to .001 and I see no change in the pattern. I have tried it in ST Layout and some of the other possibilities available. what does it take to effect the depth setting?
Myron

Post a drawing that contains only an object to which you've assigned a problem brick material. Somebody will have a look and, with luck, offer a solution.

Henry H

Which "Brick" shader are you using?
I was able to get each side to show with the "Wrapped Bricks Bonds" shader and the Stack bond. I also wrapped the material to a 8, 4 and 3.2 inch high box so the bricks appeared as a single row, though the row looks best when sandwiched between something. Sitting atop of something; sometimes it works, but most times it doesn't. If you need a single row of bricks in a particular area, you might be better off making one (brick&mortar) as a Block, then make copies to suit.



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This is the best I have come up with for what I want. The Soldier course on top works ok because all I change is height and width of the brick. The wainscoat seems to change. I got one to work but when I applied the same material to another it comes out wrong. the wainscoat has a 15 degree downslope.
Myron Wilson TC16Pro

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This is the best I have come up with for what I want. The Soldier course on top works ok because all I change is height and width of the brick. The wainscoat seems to change. I got one to work but when I applied the same material to another it comes out wrong. the wainscoat has a 15 degree downslope.
Myron Wilson TC16Pro

Here ya go, Myron. Open the attached .tcw (your drawing, with the wainscot material changed) and look at the wainscot material properties. Here are a couple of points worth remembering:

1) "Auto axis" Wrapping should be avoided IMO, mainly because a pattern wrapped this way won't stick to an object when it's moved.

2) "Constant" Reflectance cannot receive shadows and will not display any modeling; for example, a sphere with "Constant" reflectance will look like a flat disk no matter where it is viewed from. Thus it's generally used for special purposes and not applied to ordinary objects.

I used the "seeding" method of applying material to your wainscot objects, to avoid potential problems related to the Workplane(s) on which they were created. Briefly stated, this method consists of creating a tiny "seed" object (I prefer a Sphere) on the Workplane that the material is based upon, then applying that material to the seed. The seed is rotated if necessary to align its axes with those of the target object; then it's 3D-Added to the target (clicking the seed and then the target), usually after placing it at the latter's Center of Extents. The target should have NO material assigned before the 3D-Add operation.

In your drawing, the new material is based upon the World Workplane, so I drew four tiny spheres (one for each wainscot object) on that WP. I removed the material assignment from each wainscot; assigned the new material ("My rollock S-S2") to  each sphere; placed one sphere at the Center of Extents of each wainscot and rotated two of them about their Z axes so the +X direction of the sphere coincided with the +X direction of the wainscot; 3D added each sphere to its surrounding wainscot.

Henry H

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This materials thing is giving me a headache. It may be above my evolutionary scale in TC. I hope everyone will bear with me for my questions. Someone should write a book on this subject.
   I think I understand the seed method. If I create a sphere ( I believe that it should be smaller than what you add it to). I add the My Rollock S-S2 material to this sphere, rotate it to the direction I want. I then place the sphere at the center of extents of the object I am adding it to. By choosing the sphere first when adding that makes the second object take on the properties as the first including the material.
   I used a 2" sphere and applied your material to it  and moved this sphere to the center of my rollock, when I tried to add this to the rollock I got a message telling me The selected entity must be of the Turbocad surface type. When I check the properties of the object the TC surface is checked but greyed out.
   Was I correct that I needed to do this seed method with your material?
I have attached the file I have been using.
    Myron W

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Henry has written a book on materials which is available from Cadcourse.  It's a few years long, but quite invaluable. John

I have looked on Cad course several times but I have not seen any information on the use of materials listed.
 Myron

I have looked on Cad course several times but I have not seen any information on the use of materials listed.
 Myron

Try this link:

http://cadcourse.net/index.asp?PageAction=VIEWPROD&ProdID=76

   I used a 2" sphere and applied your material to it  and moved this sphere to the center of my rollock, when I tried to add this to the rollock I got a message telling me The selected entity must be of the Turbocad surface type. When I check the properties of the object the TC surface is checked but greyed out.
   Was I correct that I needed to do this seed method with your material?
I have attached the file I have been using.
 

You cannot add a TC Surface object and a Solid. The message appeared because you created the sphere as a Surface. To create a sphere as a Solid, open its Properties dialog after selecting the Sphere tool but before actually using it, then click on "3D" in the left side of the dialog. Check the "Solid" box. (See attached screenshot.)

While the size of the seed isn't critical, BTW, you want it small enough to be certain it's fully buried in the wainscot when you place it at the latter's COE.

You were probably correct about needing to use the seed method with my material and your wainscots. Whether it really was necessary depends upon how and where you created them, but one of the advantages of the seed method is that the history of the "target" object is irrelevant.

Henry H

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Thanks for the link for the book Henry.How much has changed since the book was written.
   Myron

Thanks for the link for the book Henry.How much has changed since the book was written.
   Myron

Unfortunately quite a bit has changed. Most of the changes are additions to the available Reflectances and Textures. I think most of the other changes are fairly easy to work with, but that opinion might be influenced by my familiarity with the program.

Henry H

Henry, Does your book cover the types of questions I have been asking and is it something that would help a beginner understand the current materials palette?
Myron

Henry, Does your book cover the types of questions I have been asking and is it something that would help a beginner understand the current materials palette?
Myron

Myron, I'd say Yes to both of your questions, but  my answer has got to be biased. Let's hope someone else will chip in here and offer more insight.

Henry H