Cobblestones

[Svenart]

http://medievalworlds.com//svenart/gallery/coppelstone035T.jpg

Hello together,

Since 2 days I´m now working on a new plugin that can help create cobblestones and (hopefully) later walls, too. The plugin has not many options at the moment, but I think the result looks nice already. C&C is always welcome. If you already know plugins doing the same, please let me know. Hope you like it, thanks for viewing.

[kopperdrake]

Ooh - are you planning on making it commercial? Love the effect - what surface channels does it affect? And is the grass part of the plugin or was that added afterwards? Looks great!

[RonGC]

Looks very promising :thumbsup:

Will be looking out for this plugin.

Ron

[Svenart]

thank you both :)

My plan was to make the first version of the plugin available for free. If then there will be any interest in this, I will think about to add more options and release a commercial version for a low price. The surfaces only use texture, specularity and bumpmapping at the moment. The grass was not added manually, the plugin is placing them between the stones.

If you have any suggestions, or ideas for cool options, just let me know.

[mis]

Looks real nice

textureing and the iregularity and so
nice touch with the grass as well real nice

so what about the texturing, does the plugin do the shapes of the stone with
some kinda uv or does it come with some maps
that it setup automaticly or how does this work

mis

[COBRASoft]

Very nice!

[safetyman]

I'm interested in everything you do. Looks like a great plugin.

[Tobian]

Cool ideas, should compliment your other plugins nicely! :) I look forward to see what you produce!

[Cougar12dk]

Very cool Sven :) I think a free edition sounds like a good way to get people interested and using your plugin..... me for one :D

[hrgiger]

[IMG] If you already know plugins doing the same, please let me know. Hope you like it, thanks for viewing.

Well, not quite the same but LWCAD has the ability to create sidewalks with your own custom brick shapes or existing presets. You can watch the video here: http://www.wtools3d.com/swf/online_help/LWCAD_30/detailed_sidewalks/detailed_sidewalks.htm

[Kuzey]

This looks interesting and I love the idea of placing the grass too...keep up the great work :thumbsup:

Kuzey

[dpont]

[IMG]If you already know plugins doing the same...

There's something near, but may be different
with the Blocks procedural node in RmanCollect,
with just a bit crumple and turbulent noise.

63365

Denis.

[Svenart]

Thank you all for your feedback. I have now nearly finished the work for version 1.0 of the plugin and hope that I can release it in the next 1-2 days.

@ mis: The plugin is not creating the single stones, It´s only creating cobblestonepavement using premodeled stones. I tried to change my description above as I realsized my spelling error, but I couldnt edit the post anymore. The stones are not uvmapped, because I´ve planned to make it later possible that the plugin can cut the stones with keeping the textures.

@ hrgiger: Thank you for the link. I believe I have seen the rooftutorial from lwcad and I think his tools are just great. Unfortunately, I cannot use them because of the buildings I´m working on have to be slope, wry, and old looking (Like medieval buildings have to look). This was the main reason to start working on this plugin.

@ dpont : Thank you, good to know.

[Svenart]

here I have made 2 more renders. Most important change: Before, the plugin used a grid of 10x10 cm for placing the stones, now you can set the rowheight, and use stones with different lenghts.

[JohnMarchant]

Looks great mate, cant wait to see the plugin, i have a medieval street that could do with that right now.

Regards, John

[kopperdrake]

Very interested in playing with the first release :)

Other possible options would be:

1) Make it so that you could add bricks to walls, especially irregular stones which now rely on maps or painful placement by hand.

2) Other dirt types added to the cobbles and/or mortar, such as moss, mud smears etc.

Question - what happens when you get to the edge of the polygon? Is there a way to make edging stones?

Love the look though!

Duncan

[RonGC]

Looking better and better. Should be a useful tool to have.
Ron

[JBT27]

This is very nice , and I would definitely buy into it, and a wall plugin.

Much as I agree about Medieval buildings needing to have that organic look, more so than buildings of later periods maybe, I'd still reckon that LW-CAD can play a major role in working with such scenes.

Julian.

[trick]

I would love an option the have the stone direction follow a path (curved streets). Or even better: define areas with path direction so you can make very complex cobble arrangements. And the option for "collision" objects: like when there are flagstones around which the other smaller stones fill the area. Cool idea !!:thumbsup::thumbsup:

[Svenart]

thank you all:) I have now nearly finished the work on V.1 (Beta). I will just write a short readme and make some last tests, than I will upload it here for you to download.

@ kopperdrake: thank you for you suggestions. I will keep it in my mind.

@ trick: I know what you mean. But much easier to make such a curved road for example would be to add bones to a streetpart and deform it in layout (maybe together with displacement maps ).

[trick]

...@ trick: I know what you mean. But much easier to make such a curved road for example would be to add bones to a streetpart and deform it in layout (maybe together with displacement maps ).

Yes I know, but for arrangements this could get very complex. I would rather have a straight model out of modeler. The other thing is that I mostly render in other programs.

[JBT27]

thank you all:) I have now nearly finished the work on V.1 (Beta). I will just write a short readme and make some last tests, than I will upload it here for you to download.

@ kopperdrake: thank you for you suggestions. I will keep it in my mind.

@ trick: I know what you mean. But much easier to make such a curved road for example would be to add bones to a streetpart and deform it in layout (maybe together with displacement maps ).

I would be very happy to see a push-button solution to curving organic road structures, like dirt and mud-tracks, cobbled roads, etc., but actually all the tools to do that are there between Modeler and Layout, albeit a very 'handmade' approach.

That said, as trick suggests, building a kind of spline template for your road layout and then having a tool fill that in with whatever objects you need, following the paths, would be great.

LW-CAD's Rail Clone would be useful for that, except it seems to space clones unevenly - useful because it's interactive, whereas the native Rail Clone spaces evenly but is not interactive.

But there are alot of ways, and as ever it depends alot on how close you're going to get to the road.

Julian.

[trick]

The key issue here is that this plugin can use elements with different dimensions, in other words the elements see each others boundaries. I use a lot of tools in different programs but they all have trouble doing this specifically. As it is now you can only vary one direction if I understand it correctly, but it would be great if this could be both directions. I understand that this could lead to longer calculation times, but doing this by hand is so cumbersome ! The best way I think would be to randomly generate a grid with both x- and y-direction varied cells (and parameters for min. and max.x/y size), in which the cobbles have to be scaled, maybe with some variance in the grid-width per cell so the grid does not look to regular ! Together with areas in which the cobbles have to follow a specified direction, I think you would have a commercial plugin I would be really interested in :thumbsup:

[Svenart]

I have now uploaded the first beta of V1.0 of the plugin here for free download:

http://www.svenart.de/plugins/Cobclone1beta.zip


Please read the readme before starting. In the folder, there is also a subfolder with a few cobblestones. Please try it out and let me know if you have tips, ideas or critics. Much important, please let me know, also, if you know a better name than cobclone or cobbleclone :help:

@ JBT27 : Makin such a tool is possible, and it´s already on my list. Maybe not for the next version, but after I have added all needed basic functions, I will start with this complex ones. Thank you.

@ trick: You are so right:thumbsup: Some weeks ago I did this cottage (http://www.newtek.com/forums/showthread.php?t=88701). But placing all the stones was really no fun. So I decide to start writing the plugin. The plugin can at the moment use stones with different lenghts, but all must have the same height (or less, so they fit into the rows). Meanwhile I have found a solution for making it so that you could use also stones with different heights (in theory), but this would be much slower, much easier to do in nearly all other languages than lscript, and then new problems would appear (the plugin would have to set the stones "clever"... you would need the right stones in every size or you would have to cut or scale them, or let the stones generate by the plugin...). However, I will try what I can do. Thank you for your suggestions:)

[blacksmith]

Useful plugin. I hope you'll finish it and it won't be too expensive.

[Lottmedia]

still seems a little erratic, I get varied results, sometimes good, sometimes nothign at all. Super effort, though, and really useful. I needed somethign like this a while back but had to make due with doing hand modeling and greebles & nurnies.

Bravo

C :cat:

[Tzan]

Nice work!

CobbleBlaster3000

Ok maybe not.

[Mudvayne]

nice stones..man.