I was trying to build a realistic 3D model of a brick wall, complete with bricks, cement, and a sense of roughness.

At first, it was just a flat plane with a brick texture applied to it. Look closely and you’ll notice something missing, it doesn’t feel real. There’s no depth, no tiny creases or uneven surfaces, the bricks don’t bulge out, and the cement doesn’t sink in. Everything looks perfectly flat.

Brick Wall First Attempt
Brick wall made by applying a random image texture to a plane.

After going through a few tutorials, I managed to make it look much better, something closer to reality, with depth and shadows.

Improved brick wall render
My attempt at a more realistic brick wall.
More detailing
I was able to make it this much realistic before crashing my PC.

That’s when I hit my hardware limits. My computer isn’t exactly built for heavy 3D graphics. It has only 8 GB of RAM and an AMD Ryzen 3000 integrated GPU (to put it in perspective, it can’t even run GTA IV).

Tomorrow, I’m upgrading my RAM to 24 GB, hoping it’ll give a small performance boost. Unfortunately, the graphics card on my laptop is soldered to the motherboard, so it can’t be upgraded.

So for now, I’ll stick with simpler animations and models, focus on creativity, not realism. Someday, with better hardware, I’ll revisit the realistic stuff again.