Graphics Reference
In-Depth Information
Figure 11-9:
Slight adjustments to the Stucco texture result in a much more natural and realistic material.
As far as the general material settings go, stucco walls use very low Specular/Reflective amounts
(1%-2% is typical), as well as low Fresnel (around 5%). This very low reflectivity helps add subtle realism
and ties texture into the overall scene. Variations of color can easily be utilized to add style to the material.
The addition of some subtle variation to the Diffuse Amount (with any simple noise texture) keeps the sur-
face from looking too uniform. These options were taken into account in
Figure 11-9
.
One possible pitfall of working with such dense displacement maps is increased render time due to the
massive number of polygons created in the displacement process. In images that use the stucco material
heavily, render times can become unwieldy. In such a case, a mixture of bump and displacement maps can
be useful. A combination of the default stucco texture (as displacement) and the modified stucco texture (as
bump) can yield a good-quality result (though less accurate) with a greatly reduced render time. The image
shown in
Figure 11-10
features two layers of the Stucco texture. In the Material settings, the Bump Am-
plitude is set to 2.5 mm, and the Displacement Distance is set to 12 mm. While the material retains many of
the features of the displacement texture, the render time drops from 12 minutes to 1 minute.
