I’m currently creating brick walls with individual modelled bricks, and it’s driving the file size up again. Ive looked online and in the forums but there is no clear tutorial for doing this. Does anyone have advice to create a brick pattern on the wall with real grooves (not just an image)? Thank you.
When you model each brick, what problem are you trying to solve?
The file size goes up when I start copying hundreds of bricks. It would be nice to apply a brick pattern to a wall that doesnt, a) require placing each individual brick (of course group copy/paste doesnt make it that arduous), and b) keeps file size low(er).
You’re misunderstanding my question.
Clearly you know the effect can be created with a color texture or material.
What problem is solved by modeling each brick?
In case I want to render this down the road, I’d like to have the texture of the bricks.
I tried applying the material brick and although I can see it in render view, in my viewports it doesn’t show up under the pen view. Also, had problem adjusting size orientation of brick pattern (.see the image of the brick material wrapping vertically on the one wall but normally on the other. It shouldnt look like this.
here’s a pretty quick way to make the bricks…
however, the file size is 100MB… and the performance slowdown is becoming noticeable in the smallish example.
Thanks Jeff. Yes, the file size is the problem. I’m trying to figure out using the materials “brick”, and I got it working for some, but other walls it shows vertically. Also, it shows tiny on some walls in my viewport, and normally/to proper brick scale on other walls. I’m stuck, but Ill keep tinkering.
make the brick a _Block then array it… file size will drop waaaay down. 
this should all be controllable via the mapping options but i don’t use windows and mac is very different in this area of the program. (i’m assuming you’re on windows?)
maybe @BrianJ can show the way?
1 Like
Check out this video tutorial on texture mapping in Rhino 5
You could in a case like this use either a Box map for the entire model making sure to keep the width and length of the box uniform or alternately you could set the texture mapping for the brick texture within the material to WCS which stands for world coordinate system. This way you can adjust the texture size for all objects where the material is assigned in unison. Here’s a screenshot of the texture settings within the material where WCS can be enabled. You’ll need your Materials panel open from the Panels drop down menu and you’ll need to click the name of the brick texture in the brick material in order to edit the texture settings as shown.
2 Likes
Thanks Jeff. I’ll try the _Block option if I can’t figure out the texture/materials way first. Yes Im on Windows 10.
Thank you @BrianJ. The video helped me a bit but your comment and suggestion solved it. Wow, it’s not intuitive at all, hey? Maybe because I’m green to all this. Thank you so much! I’ve noted this procedure down in my notebook… im sure Ill be using it lots!
Im realizing now that my plan view clippingplane is showing a strange hatching in the walls It does this only where cutting through walls with the brick pattern when the rendered view is enabled (doesnt do this on pen, technical, etc). Solve one problem and create another… Any workaround?
Lastly, if I wanted to make this white painted brick, is there an easy way to do that or do I need an entirely new pattern of a white painted brick?
Solved my own problem with the section pattern. I had to change the options>view>rendered and change "clipping plane objects>show fills>color usage from “viewport” to solid color… now if only I could have an option to do a diagonal hatching instead of a solid fill (dreaming?). I’m attaching before/after showing what I changed in case anyone comes across this problem in the future.
Would still like to figure out how to make this look like white painted brick. 
In v6 the default mapping for textures in the library materials will be WCS to make this easier for users new to texture mapping. Hopefully it will help in most cases to produce the desired result. The default now is channel 1 which is controlled by the surface UV directions. This is useful if you want a texture to flow in the same way the control point structure does but for linear models like you’ve shown, box WCS is better.
You can uncheck the color texture in the material to just use the bump but this will look quite uniform in color and won’t be as realistic as a custom white brick color texture. I happened to have made one a while back… here you go. Just add it to the color channel of a basic material and change the mapping to box WCS. This one is already set to be included in the v6 material library too… actually there will be about eighty different types!
Thank you Brian! This is great… but I’m trying to, as you suggest, “add it to the color channel of a basic material”… and Im lost. Sorry, not sure how to do that.
OK SO I think I figured out how to add the pattern to a color channel. Thank you.
1 Like
No problem, I’m glad you got it sorted. You can right click the material thumbnail now and save the file out as an rmtl which will give you the option to embed the image in the material file. This will let you import it with the right mapping/scale in other models later.
1 Like
Thank you.
Hey guys, if you need additional brick textures for your projects, check out www.pixelboo.com
There’s a ton of textures I use and I uploaded them there which includes brick textures galore. Hope it helps 