open hex mesh

[smroepe]

Hello all,

a recent topic discussed the open metal mesh, or mesh_alpha texture.  I was wondering if anyone had the same thing but with a hex pattern instead of a hole pattern.  I have a solidworks model of what im trying to acheive, but a texture would be easy to apply to all materials.

Thanks

[tvanryn]

Hey smroepe!

A little tutorial on what I did:

In Illustrator (which I hardly know at all) I created a 5"x5" document, and turned on the grid and grid snaps.  I created a rectangle with no stroke and assigned a gradient on it, with 3 colors, gray, dark gray and really dark gray.  The dark gray I placed about 70% toward the really dark gray.  Gradient is lengthwise along the rectangle.  I arranged this, with copies, into a criss-cross pattern that I could tile seamlessly.  Once I had a pattern I liked, I exported the document as a PNG, with a transparent background.

Then in KeyShot:

I selected the surface I wanted as a mesh, right clicked and chose Edit Material.  I assigned the PNG I created as a Label, not as a texture or bump map.  For the material parameters I picked black for Diffuse, Ambient, Specular and Diffuse transmission.  For Specular transmission I picked white.  This gives the transparent part of the PNG transparency in the material.

Then you just have to play with the scales to get it to look like you want.  Hope this helps!

[smroepe]

Thanks! this is very helpful.