Creating brick material with squished mortar

Support Materials and Textures
1

Hi clever folks of BlenderArtists.org!

How would one go about creating a material like this in blender cycles (the wall)?

DSCF5032.jpg1533×2300 754 KB

The important thing to me is to get the squished-out mortar right with the shadow and all. What route should I take? Procedural, Photoshop-mania, modelling it or is there a really stupid simple way to do it?

Thanks in advance!

2

If you want to make a material that does this - you’d probably have to use microdisplacement.

screen.png1092×826 525 KB

I got the diffuse and displacement textures from here - but you’d have to find (or make) a suitable one specific to the effect you are after.

Remember - to activate microdisplacement you need:

  • To have the latest version of blender.
  • To turn experimental features on.
  • To set the displacement setting in the cycles material to “true”.
  • Add a subdivision modifier to the wall object and activate “adaptive” (I used a dicing rate of 0.25 for this example - smaller is more detailed).
3

A good displacement texture is what you need.

If that texture is scanned/painted/procedural, is up to you. Scanned will give the best results, but not everyone has means to create good displacement textures (either laser scans, or any other technic).

Here’s a quick procedural test using the new brick texture from 2.78 (I could push it even further but this is just for demonstration purposes):

upload.png800×800 522 KB

4

Thanks guys - I will look into the displacements. (And start by simply updating my blender version).