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Author Topic: Railcone and ceiling tiles  (Read 4397 times)

FC1888

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Railcone and ceiling tiles
« on: January 03, 2018, 02:02:09 PM »
While working on an office refurb, I needed to create a ceiling.

I found the tutorial https://www.itoosoft.com/tutorials/ceiling?back=page%3D3%26tag%3Drc very useful, but then I came across a problem. I have set it to match the existing layout if the original office, so that you have a light fitting on every 4th tile on X and every 3 tiles on Y, but in places I have a column that intersects a light fitting.

Any tips one how you could adapt the style to avoid that situation.. and no I cannot move the columns :)

Paul Roberts

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Re: Railcone and ceiling tiles
« Reply #1 on: January 03, 2018, 06:16:50 PM »
Hi,

thanks for the question. We've been asked about this a few times and it's a tricky one to solve. If the clipping around the boundary of the room isn't a big deal there is a solution to this that works quite well. It involves using two generators, one for the ceiling with lights, and another with just plain tiles. To set it up you would need to change the following.

 - The generators must use either X and Y Sizes, or X and  Y Splines to set the size of the array. You can't use Extend X/Y Size to are for this technique
 - All segments should have Properties > Deform > Slice turned Off.
 - Create two generators, one includes the full style, with the light fittings etc. The second one has only blank tiles. Make sure they use exactly the same XY dimensions/splines
 - Create a spline that encompasses the boundary of the room and the footprint of any pillars or other areas you don't need lights.
 - Wire this to the Clipping input.
 - For both generators, change the Clipping Area > For No Slice mode to Remove.
 - For the first array (the one with the lights) set Clipping Area > Mode to Remove. This will remove all entire segments that cross the clipping spline.
 - For the second array (plane tiles) set Clipping Area > Mode to Exclude. This will add back the segments "outside" the clipping spline.



I've attached a simplified sample file to illustrate this technique. I hope that helps but please let me know if you have any further questions.

Many thanks,

Paul
Paul Roberts
iToo Software

FC1888

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Re: Railcone and ceiling tiles
« Reply #2 on: January 04, 2018, 01:54:54 AM »
I had a feeling it wouldn't take long for a reply. Many thanks for this, works very nicely in this particular situation, thanks.

Just a thought though, would it ever be possible to add a feature like this, where you simply create splines (exclusion type), that would replace say and lighting tile, with a standard one, if a lighting tile, crossed any such boundary. Would certainly make the creation of such things, very much simpler and faster.... Just a thought

OR maybe an edit function similar to Forest Pack Pro, allowing you to move, scale, rotate particular trees, in a scatter group, where you could just select the affected light tiles and replace them with plain ones.. again, just a thought..

But thanks again Paul, for your prompt response and solution to my little problem