what is the best way to render a hardwood floor?

[Paul]

What is the best way to render a realistic hardwood floor? Would it be better to model one board and duplicate it, creating a series of boards? or to just use one surface and apply some sort of displacement to it? how would I create a different wood grain for each board? If anyone knows any tutorials or would be willing to write a quick description it would be greatly appreciated.

p.s. my experience in displacement mapping is somewhat limited so please try to keep descriptions to a "dumbed down" level.

thanks in advance

[Jak_Carver]

Well this depends alot on what your going for. For example, is it going to be an extreme close up shot of the wood floor or will it be seen from a medium to long distance?

If its not a close up, then its easy. Simply use a texture of real wooden board floors and create a normal map for it, though you could use a displacement map or bump if you want-I likw to use normal maps though. Than make sure you use a specular and reflection map for more realism (if realism is what your going for).

If the shot is a close up, then simply use the same technique except instead of using one poly plane to represent the floor, model the boards out manually and apply a different texture maps to each and change them up a bit to make them look unique, like in real life.

That should do it, I happen to be working on an old wooden floor on my scene right now by coincidence and I went with the former technique because I will not require extreme close up shots of the floor for my scene. Good luck.

[Paul]

Thanks, ill probably go with the second technique, I have to render 2 shots of it, one is from far away and the other is a close up, so I figure Ill kill 2 birds with one stone and just do the second.

Thanks again for the help.

-Paul