Why would you want to? With Roman tiles like these, the tessellation is such that solid tiles give the best result.

Hi Tony,

> how you can create a tiled roof using a single surface without
> creating individual objects

Well, you can use Boolean Union on your 2 objects in your example file to intersect them and remove the common interior area and then they will be combined into one single object.

But since you've got sharp edges and 90 degree corners in different pieces of your shape, you won't be able to make it out of literally just 1 single surface because just one single surface has to be smooth throughout its interior region. If you have a form that has sharp creases in it, that will be made up of multiple faces that are separated by the sharp crease.

For something that has distinct elements like that, it's easiest to create replicated separate objects for it.

If you want to make some kind of big surface with a repeated lumpy pattern in it, you could look at ZSurf for generating a surface from a texture image:
http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=3825.2

But you're not going to get something with that kind of distinct sharp edges in it with that method, if you want it to actually look like distinct tiles then creating individual objects is the easiest and of course it also maps to the actual physical model as well.

- Michael

I want to make a single surface using a kind of overlay to highlight the shadows in rendering and have a quick calculation otherwise the file gets heavier like this that I enclose 440 kbytes

It is not possible with loft, sweep, extrude, or create a series of curves that create a curve in a single moment on which to apply an offset surface ....... a curve that has recesses for the shadows?

If you use a polygon modeller for this, like Modo, you could use replicators, which are place holders until actual rendering. This make the model very light. I have created renders with several million polygons using this method (1 billion was the most I managed).

If you do this in nurbs, like Michael says, you really need distinct objects.

Maybe for just "looks", something similar to this:



It's a network.

That looks quite good Burr, and it allows for creating it as a larger "sheet" of stuff.

Will that method work for you Tony?

But really if you're mostly concerned about file size, then using an instancing feature in your rendering program is probably the way you would want to do it - many rendering programs have some way to replicate an object where it does not fully copy each separate one and instead keeps it as a lightweight instance of the main one.

- Michael

It probably wouldnt texture very well.

Exact burrman ..... But the problem is that objects must overlap to see the shadows ..... well I think this is unfortunately the real difficulty.

thanks anyway

Well, you can adjust the curves a bit too:

Had to sample it...

Sure, it was just what I was saying ...... you have been a great help thanks

Hello and thanks