Materialwerk has just released BRIX, a new tool for 3ds Max & Maya that offers a solution to working with tiled materials (planks, bricks, tiles, mosaics, stone cladding and more). Bertrand Benoit posted a very informative article about his first steps with BRIX you really should take a look at. You can also see some of Bertrand’s tests below.
Materialwerk published the BRIX lite version for download at their website. They have also added a Video Tutorial Page. I’ve embedded them inside the post below too.
My first impression is that BRIX is a very robust and capable plugin. Taking all the content that comes along when you purchase, it is a big time saver too. The 250 EURO price tag seems OK for all this (This is before I fully tested it), but I personally do not like the render node policy. I think the standard license should come with a few render nodes too since most solo artists do have 1 or 2 render slaves this days. Big studios can add the extra for much more nodes anyways.
Check out the BRIX product page for more complete information about the available features. There is also an online catalog showcasing all the ready made textures that comes with it (thinking about this again, the material library alone might be worth it).
Video Tutorials
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e7llelMSoW8&hd=1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zWvBWM3hUds&hd=1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=99vp378QGEI&hd=1
BRIX by Materialwerk is a post from Ronen Bekerman's 3D Architectural Visualization Blog