From BlenderWiki
[edit] Cracks and Crevices
Go into top view NumPad 7 if you aren't already in it. Press Z, this toggles between wireframe and shaded mode - you should now see your tiles in a light grey colour. But, if you notice, there is no gap between any two tiles. If we refer back to our reference picture, there are clearly gaps between the tiles.
Go back to wireframe mode by pressing Z. To make the gaps, we need to scale each cube in the X and Y axes by a very small amount. Up until now, whenever we have scaled something, we have always done it about the median point. However, we now want to scale multiple objects about their individual centers. Each object has what is known as an object center, this is represented as a small, pink dot. The median point of your current selection is shown as a little white circle with three arrows coming from it. This can be in the same place as the object center if only one object is selected. Select all of your tiles by pressing B, and dragging a box around all of them. I have highlighted the object centers in yellow and the median point in red. The object center is merely a set point (by default the exact center) of an object. The median point is the exact center of all selected objects' object centers. Selecting two objects whos object centers are 2 units apart will cause the median point to be 1 unit away from each.
We shall now change the scale (and translate/rotate) mode by selecting the following option from the 3D window. This will cause all selected objects to scale about their own object centers. Now, with all the objects selected, start scaling S and constrain to either the X or Y axis.
Hold CTRL, and try to scale the tiles smaller, the amount each tile scales is much, much too large. To overcome this, we shall use a sub-grid. This allows us to edit to 1/10th the scale of the main grid. You hold SHIFT+CTRL and move the mouse to snap to the sub-grid. Scale the tiles by 0.97 in both the X and Y axes. We now have some pretty cracks between the tiles. Again, this also works in other modes such as rotation and translation.
[edit] Even MORE Tiles
We can now proceed to making the actual floor. First, select everything by pressing A. This actually toggles NONE/ALL, so press it again if you deselcted the tiles. Translate the new tiles by X:2, Y:0.4 so they slot into position to the right of the current set. Now we want to do this again, but with all four tiles. Select all the tiles (either with A twice or B twice and dragging) and duplicate them with Shift D. Translate them using the subgrid Shift Ctrl and position them to the right, so they slot in just like you did with the second tile.
Do this a couple of times now, so you have 8 larger tiles accross (16 total). You will have to scroll out a little bit (by scrolling) and probably pan to the right. Panning is the equivalent of scrolling, think a really big picture on a webpage. To do this, Hold Shift and MMB 
and drag. Remember that when you're zoomed out you may need to use the subgrid to align the tiles perfectly.
Select this entire row and duplicate it. Translate it upwards and a bit to the right, so it slots in as another row. Repeat this process with the two rows until you have around 16 rows. (The exact number isn't too important).
Now you have your floor, but wait! The floor is skewed a little bit, this is because of the design we're using. We will fix that now. What we want to do is rotate the entire floor round. Select all the tiles (scroll up to see how, I won't mention it again) and press R to start rotation. Move your mouse a bit, but what happens? We didn't change from object center mode. Press ESC or RMB 
to cancel rotation Change back to median point mode -- check the big screenshot on this page. Now start rotating with R, and rotate by 11. The value will appear at the bottom left. Again, use Ctrl and Shift Ctrl to snap the rotation. Now we just need to add a border and set up the scene for rendering. Click here to proceed to part III.
![[]](/skins/blender/open.png)
