Default texture direction in an Extrude?

[Andy Broomell]

What exactly determines default texture direction in an Extrude? I ask because we almost had a bit of a disaster when an revised flooring plan was sent out to our flooring people, but showed the planks rotated 90° from what they should be.

 

I've pulled out the shape into its own file and attached it. Here's a screenshot of the shape before and after:

 

The floor shape had been modified in Top/Plan in a Design Layer (where it's easy to not think about textures). The Viewport for the flooring plan is in OpenGL. All that was modified was moving the edge in the upper left corner using the Reshape tool (within the Extrude). No vertices were added or subtracted, only the one edge was moved parallel to where it was. This should not cause the direction of the texture to change. This almost screwed us, but thankfully an attentive eye on the flooring team asked "Was this intentionally changed from what it was previously?" before installing the flooring onto the set.

 

I should also note that I'm working on a television show, and changes are made constantly and very quickly / on the fly. There's not a lot of time to triple check everything. One should be able to assume that moving one edge slightly shouldn't cause any other changes except for that one moved edge.

 

Any info about the underlying cause of the texture flip?

 

 

FlooringTextureDirection.vwx

[Kevin McAllister]

That's very weird. I can easily duplicate your result. It may be elated to the location of the "closed" segment as the edge next to the one you moved is the last segment. It also seems related to the geometry itself. I traced the shape as a polyline, replaced your shape in the extrudes and made the same modification. I see the same behaviour there too.

 

Personally I'd be very cautious about using textures to convey floor direction or other physical attributes to a contractor/construction team. How the texture renders varies depending on the rendering mode you're using making it unreliable, especially if you're sharing files and multiple team members are creating sheet layer viewports. I've seen all sorts of texture anomalies and I suspect that OpenGL is considered a working rendering mode rather than a presentation mode. In the case of a floor if I wanted it to look a certain way I'd model some simple geometry and/or put a clear note on the drawing. Slower, yes, but reliable.

 

I would make sure this case is bug submitted.

 

Edit: I think its related to using "Perimeter" mapping. If you choose "Auto-Align Plane" both textures jump to the same direction. Perhaps how "Perimeter" mapping sees and interprets the object is changing as the object geometry is changed. For reliable texture placement I think I would always use the texture mapping tool to place a texture that mattered. I would also be cautious of using an extrude set to an extrusion depth of 0"

 

Kevin

 

Edited May 16, 2017 by Kevin McAllister

[AlanW]

I noticed a similar problem with marionett drawer fronts where if the shape of the front became narrower than the height the texture rotates to the widest section.