Technique for Tiling Realistic Wall Texture in Pro/ENGINEER Wildfire 3.0

Many of the textures in the Pro/ENGINEER graphic-library are close up images of certain items, such as tree branches, flowers, or bricks. This single texture placed on the background wall can make a relatively large object seem to be much smaller. By tiling the background texture, the image can be patterned and made smaller for a more realistic backdrop effect.

The following tip will explain how this can be done:

Figure 1 shows an image rendered with a brick texture on Wall 2 and a grass texture on the Floor. Notice how the size of the bricks give the impression that the model is toy-sized. Both textures were placed with default settings. Both textures will be reassigned so that they appear with the proper scale.

First the Wall 2 texture will be re-applied:

• Orient the model so that Wall 2 is in the background, and parallel to the screen (Figure 2)
  
  
• Next, click the Display tab in the ROOM EDITOR
  
  
• Now click on Shaded
  
  
• Pro/ENGINEER will shade all of the walls with their assigned textures (Figure 3)
  
  
• Turn off the Display of the front wall (Wall 4)
  
  
• Click the Wall 2 tile and navigate through the graphic-library to the same texture as before. In this case, the graphic-library\textures\brick\english.tx3 texture was used
  
  
• Select the texture, then click Open
  
  
• The APPEARANCE PLACEMENT dialog box will open
  
  
• Ensure that the Multiple radio button is enabled
  
  
• Manipulate the X and Y thumbwheels under Copies until a more realistic configuration is obtained (Figure 4)
  
  
• Click OK once the desired pattern is obtained

With the wall and floor properly tiled, a more realistic rendering can be created. (Figure 5)