Ceiling tiles

[Christiaan]

I'm doing some interior visuals for an office, with a tiled grid ceiling.

There seems to be two routes I could take. Apply a ceiling texture to a ceiling Slab or use the ceiling grid tool. Any thoughts on the best approach?

I've started off down the texture to slab approach but it's making it difficult to align light fittings with the grid.

[Christiaan]

I think I'm right is saying the ceiling grid tool isn't really geared toward 3D renders. It doesn't allow you to render the grid and tiles with different textures. And it doesn't allow you to control the grid thickness (i.e. distance between tiles)

[Dieter @ DWorks]

I use the ceiling grid just for the space between the tiles. The tiles are a slab object. Or I use one texture on the slab.

[Guest BillV]

I have added a texture to the bottom of the ceiling slab and used the "tiles" option when editing the texture. This is using Brick 2.

[Guest BillV]

In this I drew Poly Lines on the plan to represent the grid of the the ceiling tiles, then drew a shape to represent the join, then extrude along a path and set the Z level to the required height.

I then drew a polygon in plan view to represent the light. Converted the polygon to an area light. Then draw a poly to represent the frame of the light, plus a small rectangle and with extrude along a path you then have a frame.

Set the frame and light to the required height and as Wes Gardner says Et Voila!