Right so here how it actually works the universal template.


1. First step is to set up a universal scene. I set up my camera, plane and dummy brick where all bricks will be positioned. I also set up render to give me zdepth, normal and ambient oclusion for later work. For purpose of this render I set up my camera to have very high lens which result was 10000.0 MM thanks to that the view looks to be nearly orthographic. I also used camera zdepth clipping options (red cross square on image) that sets the zdepth for all my bricks it is crucial to keep it identical on all of the images so that they all have right height for displacement.

2. Then I model the brick, and create 5-6 different variations. Its quite simple to do in 3D since I can just apply displace modifier and using different procedural textures I get different results...

3. Then I use Photoshop Bridge to load images in pair of 3 so that each brick has all the elements that are needed to create texture, displacement, normal and so on

4. Loading all textures in to groups making sure all is in right place and order

5. Blow u can see one of patterns I made, this is just an example of what can be done, now I can rearrange them in as many different textures as I want

6. Since all my textures so far are 32 bit for purposes of accuracy, I convert them 16 bits for diffuse, reflection and glossines texture

7. With a bit of tweaking using normal map and adding extra details I have a texture of brick. I've noticed that one brick is repeating quite a lot which made me thinking that next time I arrange my bricks I should number them so I know how oftern I repeat 1 brick. Its quite difficult to tell that by just looking at normal map.

8. RT CPU mode rendering - looking pretty good so far.

And that would be all. Now I'm off to make few more tilable paterns to work in my scene and its time to put them all in works.

The workflow of putting those shaders in scene is pretty simple. All I have to do is to import a shader and apply it to a simple plane surface - the 1 thing to remember is to keep track off tiling and UVW mapping since they do have to match the ratio of original texture so that it wont get stretch...