Floor Tiles Question

Hey all,

Somewhat silly question:

I have a bunch of straightforward white ceramic floor tiles I’ve spent admittedly very little time creating for an interior in Rhino. Problem is, when I render it, it appears as one solid as opposed to separate tiles. Now I know of half a dozen cheats I could use to emphasize each individual tile as its own “thing,” but assuming I wanted to avoid cheats–Is there any way to achieve this without raised lines, fillets, gaps between tiles, etc, or is a cheat the only real workaround?

Hi @Redjester
The reasons real tiles are perceived as individual tiles are the things you mention: fillets and gaps. Real tiles have grout between them and the edges aren’t completely sharp - they are slightly rounded. So what you are looking for isn’t a cheat - it’s what the real world looks like. If, however, you WANT to cheat and make it easy, you can select all your tiles and use ApplyEdgeSoftening to give each tile a small fillet/chamfer which is applied only to the rendermesh, not the actual geometry. That should help them look as individual tiles rather than a single surface.
HTH, Jakob

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Could you do it with a displacement of a black/white pattern? Then you can define the repeats of your tile.

Otherwise I’d echo the above, edge softening would help. ExtractRenderMesh the edge softened object perhaps to get the object out of the nurbs state if you maybe want to reduce the complexity of the mesh down.

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I appreciate your frank answer. Having worked in architecture and having laid tile, I actually know that, but have seen large white tiles as close together as humanely possible that still popped individually. Again, you’re right that there is still an incredibly small level of separation and rounded edges even in that. Again, somewhat dumb question.

ApplyEdgeSoftening seems life a good solution, though. Thanks!

Hi @Redjester
Didn’t mean to be condescending! It’s impossible to know what background people have, so sometimes what is logical and bright as day to some, is rocket science to others. Sorry if I came across rude. And you are right - you can of course glue the backside of the tiles directly to the surface and have them sit right next to each other. I’d definitely go with ApplyEdge-softening with a tiny radius in that case :smiley:
-Jakob

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Haha. Didn’t mean to imply you were being condescending. I appreciate the suggestion, Jakob!