I am building some foreground structures on my layout. I recently had a try at some software that allows one to print various types of brickwork on paper and apply them to structures. Though it is very nice, it just looks like it is what it is: printed. Yes, you can make adjustments of lighting and color for your printer but it still doen’t have texture. I suppose it would have some value on background structures.
I am proposing finding a large structure like the side of a school building or factory that has the same kind and color of brick and photographing it. Then I would put it on my Photo Shop Elements software and resize it for my needs. Another idea I thought of is to make decals from the photos and put them on 2D brick sheet. (I will still make 3D windows, doors etc at least for the foreground structures.) Has anyone tried this?
One of the things I find frustrating with model brick sheets is apparently no one knows what the typical size of bricks for North American commercial brickwork should be as they always make them oversize. Holgate & Reynolds was the only supplier that made them the correct size for HO in my experience but it wasn’t flat enough. (That product is no longer available.) Don’t most model railroader manufacuturers do some research on their products or did they flunk out at DisneyLand?
There’s some info HERE on using photos of real brick walls to create decals for model building. Of course, these are still merely “printed” with no physical “depth” to the detail. If you want texture, you’d need to find plastic brick sheets that have bricks the same size as the bricks on the decal: as you say, not likely.
Walthers offers styrene “brick” sheets, which can look good when properly finished, and the individual bricks scale out to about 3"x9".
I’ve used my digital camera to photograph brick buildings and Photoshop to produce the finished photo flat for track side placement. All I can say is make sure to photograph the prototype structure level so brick lines are are flat. Also photograph details such as doors and windows from the same distance away from the building, makes it a lot easier to photoshop the model.
Do you have any photos of your work you could share with us? How do the models look as foregrond structures? What kind of outdoor lighting do you use? Sunny, cloudy, any particular time of day?
I think that printed or photo based masonry is always going to suffer from a basic problem - it’s flat…
BUT! [:D] You can get around this…
Verycarefully stick the print to a suitable wall material [if you choose the right thickness it sorts out the issue of wall thickness and fitting windows and doors at the same time] … once it’s all set solid lay the wall flat and score / file / gouge the mortar lines on at least some of the wall. The horizontals are relatively easy as, with care, you can do them in long runs with the aid of a rule/straightedge. The verticals can drive you nuts!
If I were using a photo of my own I would make notes and take extra pics of selected areas of the original structure to give me guidance as to which areas had the deeper/clearer/more distinctive mortar lines… I would then pay special attention to these in the model… in the hope that the trick of extra detail in some parts will fool the eye of the observer into thinking that there is extra detail all over.
Unless you can find a backing sheet of suitable colour you will of course then need to colour your improved/3D mortar lines. Subject to not getting in a mess with the inks of the print this is a matter of choosing one of the several methods described in other threads in this forum.
I think that the problem with printed masonry is always this one of flatness while moulded masonry tends to always be too big/deep… so you have to do a bunch of your own work in either case.
I don’t know if you can get Stanley knives in the US… they used to do a weird specialist blade that cut a V grove. It was ideal for this job.
I guess that the long runs could be cut with a brass backed saw or tennon saw if a cut of the right width can be achieved.
The “excavations” don’t want to be very deep.
One thing that always improves masonry is to get away from total uniformity except for completely new walls.
To say that it is flat is correct, but how much surface-structure does a brick-wall have?
I use a lot of homemade brickpapers in my structures and when I compare them with my DPM´s, the paper looks more like the photos I use for inspiration.
You can of course use decalpaper and print bricks on it and apply on plastic brick-walls as the Rensselaer Poly. I. used to do.
Hi Wabash, I happened to be cleaning out my bookcase and ran across a large cardboard covered “grade school picture”. The cardboard was gray and textured, so I cut out strips to add to a fascia low bumper wall, used to protect the small rail end bumpers at the end of a stub ended 7 track yard. Some black sponge packing material can be cut with a serrated knife, into thin sheets, that make good background pine trees, or for covering the back of background buildings, that are glued to a wall. I have also weathered WS brick sheets that can be cut to size. They are certainly better than using flat brick photos. Bob Hahn
Don’t ignore Model Railroader magazine as a resource on this subject. For example,
“Brick wall decals,” by John Nerich, in the December 2001 MR, p. 78.
“Make your town look bigger with digital buildings,” by Cyrus, Burgett, and Wiley, in our How to Build Realistic Layouts special issue no. 4*, Trackside town and city scenery*, page 36.
“Modeling roads with decals,” by Lance Mindheim, in the January 2009 MR, p. 96. Lance’s method works for buildings too, as I’ve seen him demonstrate.
A good question… the answer is a bit like the answer to how much a car is weathered. The answer to both - and what helps a model to look special - is that each example needs to be unique. The surface variation in masonry depends on brick (or block) size and the mortar in between.
Mortar isn’t usually too thick but what does vary in a wall is whether the mortar lines have been pointed or not. I don’t know if the US uses the same term - by “pointing” I mean a seperate mortar mix that gives a harder dried finish that is pressed into all the mortar joints to protect the softer mortar that holds the bricks together. If a wall has been pointed the next question is how good the pointing was and how recent. Poor/old pointing or un-pointed mortar is likely to have lost some of the soft bonding mortar with weathering. This causes the mortar lines to be deeper into the wall… but the lines will not be thicker than usual.
If weathered out mortar had a high lime content it can also add a discolouration to the bricks.
Unpointed or badly pointed walls are likely to be in temporary walls (or bricked up windows|) and/or cheaply built walls. These may also have cheap and nasty bricks or blocks… and these may have been damaged or be shedding chunks because their poor quality has let in water… especially if the water freezes lumps can be cracked off the bricks. This all means that the “surface structure” can be very varied.
Poor work and/or damage can produce re-pointing and/or re-bricking. this all adds interest.
Most camera lenses do not have the Quality to reproduce a straight line. This will show up in your print. This can be corrected if you have Photoshop or other photo editing software.
Standard masonry units in the US are based on a module of 8". A typical brick is about 2-1/2" high and 7-5/8" long, so that three of them stacked on top of each other, including the mortar joints, are 8" high, and each one including the mortar joint is 8" long.
Concrete blocks are typically 7-5/8" high and 15-5/8" long, so with the mortar joints each one is 8" x 16".
There are lots of variations, including much bigger brick sizes, but most still are fractions or multiples of 8" in some fashion.
The most realistic looking brick material I have found is from a company called JOHN RENDALL, a division of JV Models in Artesia, California. They make dimensional brick material in N, HO, and O scale using a process of multiple printer passes which deposits layer upon layer of ink to form a 3 dimensional brick pattern, in either red or brown.
Yes, I’ve used it, but I don’t have an account with any of the photo upload services. There is a picture on my web site. I used this material for the courthouse on my HO scale home layout.
Just FYI, you can insert a link to any photo that’s anywhere on the web into posts on this forum. Just copy the image URL (usually can right-click on the picture you want to get the URL), click on the green tree icon when composing your post, and paste. For example, the URL for one of your very nice HO scenes is: http://members.cox.net/cacole2/cw3019003.jpg. Using the green tree icon lets you include the photo in the post, like this:
I love the Ford, Deere, and Farmall tractors in that scene, by the way! Very nicely done.
You can download a reasonable number of textures for free (read their terms and conditions). The images can be very high res (3000x1000) and might allow “tiling”. Just scale the prints in a photo editing program to suit your scale.
(Now I’ll have people thinking that I’m taking the MIckey for the helpful response [:I]… see “thanks would help thread” [zzz]. Hey! I’ve never got to use that smiley before [(-D])
Seriously. Thanks for the info. It tells me that I cannot get away with using UK brick materials. Apart from the fact that UK stuff is 4mm/00 not 3.5mm/H0 our standard bricks are 9" long and 3" thick with their related mortar layer.
It’s amazing the weird things you can discover on here! [8D]
A different element that comes to mind is a bit more obscure.
Different bricks are used for different jobs. At the extremes there are [heavy] really hard engineering bricks that get used for things like bridge abutments and piers while cheap structures such as outhouses can be made with very light/soft bricks.
Light/soft bricks tend to be weak in their resistance to the weather as well as load bearing. This contributes to their crumbling and is why we might model some disused cheap structures as much more dilapidated.
In the U.S., higher quality mortar is generally used obviating the need for a separate pointing; the mortar itself is water resistent. When we do pointing, we really mean “tuck pointing” which is chipping out loose and/or rotten mortar and replacing it with sound mortar. (This is realllllly tedious. Also, the mortar used in the original build is commonly struck by a tool which neatens the final appearance, removes excess mortar and smoothes the exposed mortar, adding to its water resistence.
