Create Your Own Seamless Textures for Rendering and Visualizations

I have stated many times on this website that using good custom texture images for your Revit materials will greatly enhance your renderings, elevations, and overall presentations.  It is one of the main points in multiple chapters of BIM After Dark Volume 1.  So what do you do if you find and awesome image of the material you are looking for but it is not seamless??

If you are not sure what I mean by "seamless" here are two examples...

This is a textures that is NOT seamless... Notice how you can see where the image repeats itself...

This is a seamless texture... Notice how you cannot tell where the image repeats itself...

The hardest part about finding good textures is finding ones that are seamless.  There are two ways to approach such a problem.  One is to find a texture online that is not seamless and make it seamless.  The other is to take a photo of the texture you want and make it seamless...  With either approach the following tutorial will teach you how to make a seamless texture from any image file...

Revit 2014 Cloud Rendering and Custom Materials

Revit 2014 was released near the end of my semester this year (much later than normal).  Being extremely anxious to install and use it,  and extremely frustrated with Revit 2013's material editor, I installed Revit 2014 a few weeks before my final.

Everything was running smooth and the new/old material editor was a great pleasure.... Until I sent some renderings to the cloud.  

Take a good look at this test rendering.... Notice anything funny?  

That's right... the brick, stone, and wood materials are HUGE!  Those are pyramids of Giza size bricks...  When this exact scene is rendered locally (or in realistic) the brick, wood, and stone look perfect....

It looks to me like the Revit 2014 exporter/cloud has something funny going on with custom materials.  These maps and bump maps are all custom and look great locally... The second I send them to the cloud this is the result...  This did not happen with Revit 2013 and the cloud.

I remember some major improvements when Revit 2013 was released with the cloud exporter from the Revit 2012 exporter... Looks to me like they improved the cloud but not the exporter for the 2014 release...

Revit Tutorial - Custom Materials on Multiple Computers

Being in school and in work can sometimes restrict you from copying and pasting custom materials into the Revit materials library.  Then, you go to render and get that lovely error stating you are missing the textures...  And you render a black shadowy object.  Well, here is a tip that will allow you to keep your materials in your project folder or a "materials" folder... Then you can keep them on a flash drive and point Revit to it anywhere you are!

It is very simple...

1. Create a folder to place all your custom materials in (on a cloud drive, flash drive, desktop... where ever).
2. Place all of your images and bump files there.
3. Open Revit and hit the big Revit button on the top left.
   
   
   
   
4. Open the Options menu.
   
   
5. Click the Rendering tab.
   
   
6. Click the large green "+" sign.
7. Browse for your folder and click okay.

Revit Tutorial - Polished Concrete Floor Rendering Material

I received a few emails about the rendering material/settings I used to create the polished concrete floor on my design studio project seen in the picture below.  Also, some of you may like this previous post about creating custom materials and bumps..

Click here to view the video tutorial...

Click here to download the dark concrete image file used for the material...

Tutorial/Tip - Render Images Missing

Great little tip that parallels my Custom Material Tutorial, from The Revit Clinic:

The following render appearance images are missing

Common scenario when rendering is to have some materials use custom image files. I have included the 3 most common areas to check should you receive the “The following render appearance images are missing:” warning when rendering below:

1. As a best practice try to store all custom image files in one location. Wherever these image files are located, ensure that the path is specified under Options > Rendering > Additional Render Appearance Paths.

Add the path[s] where the images are stored here, and then re-render the scene to see if the warning persists.

2. If the materials are stored on a network location, verify the location appears in the list above as an additional render appearance path. Also make sure all users have access to this folder.

3. Depending on the application which created or saved the image file the material uses, Revit may not be able to load the image file for rendering. In most cases this may occur with certain JPEG compression modes and will generate the same warning message at render.

One easy test is to open the image file and save it as .PNG format instead. Edit the Revit material to point to the .PNG format image to see if this eliminates the warning when rendering.