AUGIWorld Magazine September/October 2007

segments to be roughly the size of the rocks that you want to make up your rock wall. Right-click on the plane object and convert it to an editable poly. At this point you can edit the overall shape of the wall to fit in its intended location. values should be adjusted according to the scale of the rock wall. Adjust the X and Y somewhat aggressively and make minor incremental adjustments to the Z until scale and shape look natural. Once the Noise settings are to your lik- Perspective view of UVW Mapping fier. This is going to help control the look of the rocks when we smooth them out. Adjust the Size value to something appropriate to the general amount of detail you want. Be careful though—lowering this value too much can create an extremely dense mesh. Add a TurboSmooth modifier above the Subdivide modifier. Leave all the settings at the default. This should add a nice amount of geometric detail to the rock wall. Add a UVW Map modifier above the TurboSmooth. Select Box as the mapping type. In the Material Editor add a texture map of a rock surface to the diffuse channel and apply it to the Rock Wall. Once the rock wall is finished you can select all the modifiers by clicking on the UVW Mapping modifier at the top of the stack and, while holding the SHIFT key down, click on the Poly Select modifier at the bottom. With all of the modifiers selected you can hold the CTRL key down and drag and drop them onto other plane objects elsewhere in the scene to generate instances of the original rock wall. This is very powerful because, within reason, you can add the modifiers to walls with differing shapes and curvatures. The size and general vertex locations must be somewhat similar, but it saves a lot of work. In order to make the other rock walls unique, pick a modifier that allows you to change the topology and click the “Make Unique” button in the modifier panel. This will, for instance, allow you to change the seed value in the Noise modifier or change some of the Greeble modifier settings without it changing the base object. Conclusion Finished render Once you are finished, in the modifier panel add a Poly Select modifier to the plane object and select the vertex sub-object mode. Select all the interior vertices while leaving the perimeter vertices unselected. While still in sub-object mode of the Poly Select modifier, add a Noise modifier. The Noise modifier is used to introduce randomness to the surface of the rock wall, giving it a more natural look. In the Noise parameters, turn on the Fractal Checkbox and adjust the roughness to a number that is representative of the rock shapes you desire. The strength 22 ing, add a Greeble modifier to the stack. In the parameters, turn off the triangles checkbox and turn off the Generate Widgets checkbox as well. In the Panels group, you should coordinate the Min. Height and Max. Height to the objects’ overall scale so that the rocks that make up the wall don’t stick out too far and look unrealistic. The taper amount will allow you to get some nice separation between the rocks. In that same group, turn on the Keep Original Geometry checkbox as well as the Select Tops checkbox. Next you want to add a Subdivide modi- While generating all the extra elements for your scenes, try to keep the modifier stack in mind as another avenue to model and re-use objects. The ability to copy and paste modifiers across objects is very powerful as is the ability to drag and drop modifiers to create an instanced relationship. Try to use modifiers that have a seed value or other topology-changing attributes. This will provide you with the ability to create entirely new looking objects by changing only a few parameters. Have fun! Dwayne D. Ellis is the lead 3D computer animator at Hrycay Consulting Engineers, a firm specialising in motor vehicle accident reconstruction. He is also the founder of Lifeseyes Studios and can be reached at dwayne_ ellis@yahoo.com. w w w. A U G I . c o m http://www.AUGI.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of AUGIWorld Magazine September/October 2007

Contents The CAD Manager Feature: A Good First Impression ADT and SketchUp Team for Presentations Accessing Values: Now or Later Finding the 3D in Map 3D: Surface Visualization Rocks & Rock Walls Autodesk University 2007 Preview The Missing Link On the Back Page

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