terra cotta roof tiles?

[Kevin Anderson]

Michael, You should take Kevin Browns' advice for what its worth.The same
theory applies to standing seam metal roofs. It's always best to try to
"fake it" with mapping; as its' less work & quicker rendering Doesn't matter
what the renderer you are using. One would really only want to "model" the
roof tiles if your viewpoint (camera) is up close to the roof, and the roof
is the focus of your rendering. Otherwise you are devoting a huge amount of
extraneous faces /surfaces to something that is only going to increase
rendering time & resources exponentially. But, only you can tell if the
final results are going to be worth it. In Viz, a Map composed of the tile
in the diffuse slot & a gray scale of the same in the bump slot, will give a
fairly convincing 3d roof tile to a single surface (roof), depending on the
angle of your camera and the light source. --
Kevin Anderson
ADT/Viz Site:
www.KaddAssociates.com