Plank texture in mesh

Question

I am modelling a wooden house and I'm having some trouble modeling the outside of the house which is covered in vertically aligned planks.
I have tried using the displacement map from a downloaded texture but it doesn't really work. I think the easiest way would be to model the mesh with loop cuts and then extrude every other surface to make a kind of plank texture.
But the problem here is the top of the house is a triangular prism and I can't figure out how to get the loop cuts to align vertically... Any thoughts and ideas?

moonboots · Answer

Instead of cutting each plank (which you can do, depending on the level of realism that you want to give to your object) you could use your image to create a bump map, so that it creates a bit of 3D feeling:

Seam your object:

Unwrap:

Create a height map from your current wood plank picture, with a soft like Crazy Bump or with a site like this one :

Create this kind of node setup, plug the Bump node into the Normal input socket of the Principled BSDF:

Here is what it gives:

Once you've done that you can still create additional edge loops and move the planks the way you want, or even extrude, cut holes, etc:

Plank texture in mesh

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