Applying different materials to a ‘shell’ mod room

SOF

Member
Hi,

I have been experimenting with the ‘shell’ modifier and in particular with the mention on the forums that it could be used to model a room.

The all velvet room is produced by Cheetah and the room with brick walls, floral wallpaper and wood flooring by a dedicated house and garden constructor app.

It looks like that when a shell mod is applied to a cube, all it does is wrap the 2-D ‘wall’ on itself, so that it is impossible to apply a different texture to the wrapped over section. However the house constructor app (TurboFloorPlan 3D Home & Landscape Pro) is also a 3D graphics application, and manages to construct wall etc with different applied textures. Am I missing something very simple (as usual)?
 

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Make the object editable first. You can now apply up to different 25 materials to polygon selections.

Cheers
Frank
 
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Frank I did make it editable, my steps were: box>editable>shell mod>select ‘roof’ in polygon mode> remove ‘roof’>apply ‘velvet material to ‘outside wall’.

As you can see (lower construct) this results, again in the material being applied to ‘inside’ as well.
 

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I have done all that, but the editable for the Shell Modifier is greyed out, also in the 'tool' menu
 

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No-select the main object instead.
Hi Frank,

Looking into how the house building app does it, I find, on sectioning an apparent solid wall, that it is made of two planes (three if you include the top) with each plane having its own material on both sides.

It looks as if its impossible to get what I wanted with a simple polygon edited or not and a shell modifier. I attache two screen dumps showing how the building app does the inner and outer material difference.

If you still think its possible, could you give an example of a cube - sliced off top- with different materials on inside and outside (with working). I know you are busy and I can be a pain in the but, but I am getting different messages here.
 

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:unsure: Well, the name rings a bell...

* A shell just expands a 2D polygonal mesh in the normal direction. Basically, it is a tweaked duplication.
* Geometrically speaking, there are no two sides, there is just one side. The inside is just a modified version of the outside. Which is why Martin does not show any geometry on the inside of the shell.
* The material you apply to the cube (or a panel thereof) is just replicated on the "other" side.

Screenshot 2019-10-03 at 15.37.36.png


Screenshot 2019-10-03 at 15.38.04.png


* To generate a proper inside you need to apply the shell tool (and not the shell modifier). Using the tool you can apply a texture A (eg bricks) to the outside and texture B (floral wallpaper) to the inside.

Screenshot 2019-10-03 at 15.59.47.png


* By corollary, the same applies to other modifiers: An array or a ring does not generate n independent copies of the parental object. You can neither apply different textures to 5 boxes in an array nor can you apply different parameters on an individual level.
 
* In any case, I fail to see what´s wrong in some creative floral patterns to replace brickwork or perpendicular Gothic in our boring townscapes.

Screenshot 2019-10-03 at 18.41.24.png
 
Frank,

When I broke your animated GIF down into its separate frames, I could at last see the light, or at least a slight glimmer at the end of the tunnel.. May I humbly suggest that the ability to produce apparent different materials on each face of a polygon, is such a useful tool, that you make a more accessible tutorial.

Helmut,

Ding-Dong to you too - but seriously I will try out your 'shell tool' ASAP. - but harken, my fair Esmeralda, doth call for a glass of wine - I must away

Quasi.
 
* Unless this is a very simple Norman single-room cottage, inherited from great...-uncle Wiily the C:

* The shell tool (vs the shell modifier) does offer the advantage to
1 use the inside / outside option (with the shell-modifier you need to switch normals)
2 allow for different shell metrics (external / internal walls) depending on your selection of polys (whilst the shell modifier applies to the entire object)

* Of course, there are a dozen options to construct a house.
* In the sample attached you get different walls + openings and materials. Note that this is still a single mesh. Generally, you would split that into a hierarchy of components for simple editing.
* BTW: The bovine is Esmeralda, a distant relative engaged in the testing of the Wellington boots of clumsy peripatetic clodhoppers.

Screenshot 2019-10-05 at 16.06.02.png


:oops: I will create a quick tute on applying different materials to selections of a single mesh. Selections are also a useful concept in editing, particle meshes and some scripts, so your suggestion is constructive.
 
* Unless this is a very simple Norman single-room cottage, inherited from great...-uncle Wiily the C:

* The shell tool (vs the shell modifier) does offer the advantage to
1 use the inside / outside option (with the shell-modifier you need to switch normals)
2 allow for different shell metrics (external / internal walls) depending on your selection of polys (whilst the shell modifier applies to the entire object)

* Of course, there are a dozen options to construct a house.
* In the sample attached you get different walls + openings and materials. Note that this is still a single mesh. Generally, you would split that into a hierarchy of components for simple editing.
* BTW: The bovine is Esmeralda, a distant relative engaged in the testing of the Wellington boots of clumsy peripatetic clodhoppers.

View attachment 34996

:oops: I will create a quick tute on applying different materials to selections of a single mesh. Selections are also a useful concept in editing, particle meshes and some scripts, so your suggestion is constructive.

Esmeralda looks a tad jaundiced, but seriously, I will be looking forwards to your quick tute, on the above and many other aspects of C3D

Quasi.
 
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