Photo Realistic Texturing LOD Buildings

Rendering
1

Hello Rhino Community,

I’m currently working on a project that involves enhancing LOD 2.0 building models by applying realistic textures to the facades using street view and panoramic imagery. While I have the basic models ready and access to the required imagery, I’m seeking advice on how to efficiently apply these textures in Rhino to achieve photorealistic results.

Specifically, I’m looking for guidance on the following:

  1. Preparation of Imagery: What’s the best way to prepare street view and panoramic images for texturing in Rhino? Are there specific formats, resolutions, or editing techniques that work best for this purpose?
  2. Mapping Techniques: Could you recommend efficient techniques or workflows in Rhino for mapping these images onto the facades of LOD 2.0 models? I’m aiming for accuracy and minimal distortion, keeping in mind the complexity of some building shapes.
  3. Texture Adjustment Tools: Once the textures are applied, what tools does Rhino offer for adjusting and fine-tuning the textures on the model facades? I’m interested in alignment, scaling, and dealing with perspective issues.
  4. Advanced Tips: Are there any advanced tips or tricks that could help in achieving more realistic texturing effects? For example, ways to simulate depth or texture variances that give a more natural look to the building surfaces.
  5. Resources and Examples: Lastly, if there are any tutorials, guides, or example projects that cover similar texturing tasks in Rhino, I would greatly appreciate links or references to those.

I am relatively new to advanced texturing techniques. Your expert advice and insights would be invaluable in helping me elevate the realism of these architectural models. Thank you in advance for your time and assistance!

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Hi @Krishna_Mohan ,

A trick I’ve used with building photos in the past is to mask out the glass portions of the building.

So if it’s a masonry and glass midscraper as an example, I may give the overall texture a low reflectance value and then the masked glass regions a high reflectance value. Depending on the renderer used you can achieve this in different ways. A Metallic or Roughness Map would be one way.

Another tip with the glass is to us a blurred noise texture at a very large scale as the bump map in building glass.

If you reference most glass facades in real life, there is slight undulation across the glass panels as glass is often not perfectly planar or aligned to its neighbor panels perfectly.

So when you see a building reflection, it is slightly distorted similar to waves on a pond with a slight breeze.

This will help subconsciously have the buildings look a little more realistic. (In my opinion)

Also you can use displacement maps to insert the window portions, facade details, etc.

However, given that you are attempting to source the imagery from Google street views and such, this may result in more manual work than you want to do.

At the very least, controlling the reflection values of the different “building materials” on your building texture maps/materials will help a lot.

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In addition to the good pointers by @michaelvollrath I would suggest watching https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_ikG-u_6r0&list=PL4Dq5VyfewIxxjzS34k2NES_PuDUIjRcY&index=12 to get some inspiration (the entire playlist of lazy tutorials is good for inspiration).

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