Create a brick wall based on texture?

[Brian Jones]

Displacement channel probably but making a good displacement map from an original coloured image is not trivial – though you can sometimes get good enough results (depending on what you need) just by desaturating the original image.

[Benjamin Brown]

Thanks Brian-I need to collapse the wall too. Am I wrong in thinking that wouldn’t work?

[Brian Jones]

to get it to collapse you are going to need to build geometry. I don’t know if there is a cheat you could use, it would depend on the image, the shot angle, where you want the collapsed material to go (do you see it just fall or what?) etc.

[Benjamin Brown]

Heres the full scoop-its a couple of interviews shot in front of a brick wall. We want the brick wall to fall apart behind the subjects. Collapsing a brick wall is obviously not a big ordeal, but doing it such that the bricks match the bricks in the image…I haven’t figured out any way to do that. So as far as the angle goes, its pretty flat. Its just a wall behind a person being interviewed. The camera may possibly have to rotate away from the subject. Any other thoughts? Thanks for your time.

[Brian Jones]

you’d have to separate your people from the background, if you can do that then it is just a matter of using the wall image as a background and building the geometry to match. (easier said than done) Rectangular bricks? New? Old? (meaning a lot of shape irregularties). But without a separated subject when the 3D bricks move the 2D bricks will still be there.