Piping / electrical conduits.

This is the best i've managed to get so far...

I used blur on blocks noise with contours to get slight corners, but using it more makes the pipes too blobby and un-pipelike, they already looks rather squishy around the crossovers.

Great links, I found the Techno pipe on shortly after making this thread, but the nodes thread I think has the best work on it.

They all seem to use the same technique I used, the blur then threshold and tone curve, but tiles technique seems to get cleaner paths than the blocks.

I've had a thunking that perhaps drawing each pipe one at the time, with no crossovers might mean I can blur it a lot more without getting the squishy junctions problem, thus letting me make really curvy curves.

Yep, I was thinking that tiles will get you there.
In fact, the original image you posted reminds me of truchet tiles, or that game, pipe dream.
Think of each tile as a segment of pipe, that has those fastners (Little bits that hold it to wall) on both ends. Some pipes are a quarter circle, some are straight. If you want, some can be "T" shaped, and some "+" shaped, for crossovers.
I imagine this is how the original texture was created (manualy), then a backgound was added.
The question now becomes how you can have random tiles in random orientation in FF without having dead end pipes....

Hi there MongooseKing:

I've been working on some kind of pipe-maker thing for several years, but have yet to figure out a really satisfactory system.

Here's the latest:



See how it loops back on itself... I can't figure out how to make it not do that, and instead still branch like real pipes.

The little hold down bits are probably just created using a grid blended with the pipe. It just remaps it to a tighter radius. -or- you create 2 pipe systems (one large diameter and another small diameter) and threshold between them.

Although... the example you show gives me some ideas: Esentially, they're just making a series of shapes, and then offseting them, I think. if you make it really really big, they don't loop back on themselves. maybe..

(Note: I should add that this would be completely easy to make if we had a proper 'outer glow' node...)

re: making the connectors: you could also try using my 'corner finder' snippet, which will locate corners of things, and their rotation vector. You can then bomber it, as demonstrated in the snippet. See: http://www.filterforge.com/filters/8483.html





Now that I'm looking at the shape finder again, there might be a better way to do this using the derivative function....

Yeah, that's a good idea using the threshold as a mask for T junctions. It limits it a bit, but makes fine sense.


Btw: here is the FFXML for the pipe filter I was working on.

PipemoTron 003.ffxml

When can we expect this sweet pipotron to be released?

Quote
When can we expect this sweet pipotron to be released?

Oh, I'll post the current iteration later tonight. It's a clever noise snippet.

Quote
Loving that last set of pipes Corvus, totally delicious looking. I declare it to be the most epic yet, and the metal look is perfect

Thanks! I'd like to get even more pipes in there, and make them inter-weave a bit... and have an idea to make it work. (I also want to go back to some of my space-ship filters and add this in.)

For the metal: I took a really close look at some textures from the 3d studio and was trying to match the look, channel by channel.
http://www.the3dstudio.com/product_de...uct=220640
http://www.the3dstudio.com/product_de...uct=200525 (in particular)

[img]http://www.the3dstudio.com/download_image.ashx?size=large&mode=product&file_guid=1a57dd82-2b02-453b-8c74-af10b954c2a4[/img]

Yep, I agree with SpaceRay.
An easy way to get more pipes is to render the filter several times with transparent background. Can also play with size a bit for the back layers.

Thanks very much for the filter.

I have seen it and is very well done and like it much

BUT please, is there some way to ONLY have the pipes without the background wall ?

Thanks

Here is Option 1

Here is a Photoshop composition I have made removing the background and making 11 layers of pipes and rotated and mixed them in a complex design. I have added a Drop Shadow effect so they look separate and with more depth, and one over the other
`
Thanks very much Corvus Croax for having made this great and well done filter that makes such a beautiful pipes.

Here's the above with 5 iterations of uberBlend
I guess I should add some shadow between layers.

OH, Morgantao you have done a no Background version. Great, thanks very much for making this.
------------------------------------------

Quote
Morgantao wrote: Here's the above with 5 iterations of uberBlend I guess I should add some shadow between layers.

WOW !! this looks

Very well done and good use of the uberzev uberblend !!!

If you add some drop shadows this could look really well.

____________________________________________________

Please Mongoose King keep with your own project of pipes

If you could make something like the first example you have put would be really great

Quote
Carl wrote: here is my efforts which pales to your filter look

Are you kidding ? This looks really well done and beautiful and like much that golden look of the pipes and the good shadows and the gradient applied to the pipes that make them look so real.

Quote
if your interested at all I'll post it

YES, YES, YES !!! This looks very good and interesting, please do it.

Thanks and congratulation for your efforts to do this great pipes.

Morgantao, could you explain how you have used the uberblend and the pipe filter?

Because the problem for me is that this filter is a surface filter and not a simple one, so you can´t add more things at the end

Thanks

Hey, cool stuff everyone!
You could plug uberBlend into the original thing. Might actually be faster then doing it separately and could still maintain it as a surface filter.

If you just want 'lots more pipes' you can do that too by tweaking the curves and/or increasing the repeats.

Or: take the noise output at the beginning, and just offset it into a new pattern, tone map it, and blend it back in.

Quote
I suppose you could still make it a surface filter, only it will take around 10 minutes to render a 600x600px image...

Yeah, that' whole materials part is not optimized..

Quote
You could plug uberBlend into the original thing. Might actually be faster then doing it separately and could still maintain it as a surface filter.

I'm affraid I don't follow... What do you mean?

Here's an older square pipes one I did, it's not very good pipe drawing, but i recall it had a better look to it.

Pipes.ffxml

DOH! I just finished typing a novel here, modifying my last post, when Mongoose post his post and it deleted my edit! Bad, Bad Mongoose!

Anyway, here's the jist of it:

Quote
1) Processing the red noise bit through a percentage would round out the edges - for smoother corners etc.

All that got me is flatter pipes... more like vents or conduits. I hope you know what you're doing better than me

Quote
2) in the noise channel, I think you could do some tricks with derivative, like you would do with a spiral. This will create little spiral loops, instead of making the hated closed loops. (I think!)

I have no idea what you're talking about, but it sounds smart. Why don't you give it a try

Quote
3) You could put in another tone curve which makes another set of pipes, based on the original (red) noise. This will be nice because it will look have a similar topology, but be slightly different.

Huh? How? What?! Please explain.

Quote
4) to make the height map correctly, I need to split out the R, G and B channels, and recombine...

You do that, I'll help by.... staying out of your way

I actually love the way the filters here are constructed.. Just fun helps me build some of my dream game assets without too much effort. At least the underlying part can be done now thanks to all

Will be developing my own version soon.

I'd love to see what you come up with, Skybase!

Two of my latest filters...

http://www.filterforge.com/forum/read...&TID=10012
http://www.filterforge.com/forum/read...&TID=10008