A
procedural texture is a texture which
is calculated at the time of rendering
of an image, its principal advantage
is that it does not need mapping co-ordinates
which cover any surface or form in
3 dimensions.
Its
principal disadvantage is that it
can have periodic repetition and it
especially appears more monotonous
than a traditional bitmap texture.
But
it remains irreplaceable in the very
difficult case such as an ear object
polygonal model.
With
max (2.5 and 3.0) and its excellent
Material Editor we can get so good
results...
When
I am working on a model, before it
is finished, it is pleasant to have
a procedural skin texture.
No
concern for mapping, just apply the
material and it is Practical!
In
the Material Editor each texture channel
(diffuses, bump, reflection...) can
be a different type and standard max
3 offers so much in procedural, effect
or bitmap.
Digimation
one of the best creators of plug-ins
for max distributes a collection of
procedural textures that very interesting
supplement the list opposite.
But
for the moment we use what we have...
When
using procedural textures it is necessary
to learn how to use them, also we
should not hesitate to test them one
by one, by modifying the default settings.
Then
we can have fun mixing them, amalgamating
them to obtain others from them...
Below some examples (splat, marble,
smoke, checker and cellular linen).
Of
course it is not with these basic materials
that we will make a little credible
texture of skin.
We need to mix between them.
One
thing that should be known, it is
that a procedural texture has a size,
this works with objects on the same
scale.
If
we wish to apply a procedural texture
to two objects modeled in different
files, we will have to take care that
they have the same scale ratio if
not it will be necessary to modify
the size of each procedural texture
to make it "stick" with
the scale of the model...
To
start we initially will create the
Diffuse part of texture, i.e. the
color of the skin.
We select Speckle as the type of texture
for the Diffuse channel.
The first thing is to put texture
on the model for scale.
To
see the material we regulate the colors
of texture with black and white the
Defaults.
We
can change the texture at the place
of the colors (Maps frameworks).
This is what we will do to simulate
the texture of skin, pile up several
procedural textures...
Before
going further, we replace the black
and white colors with "human"
colors.
This
time we use Smoke. The Smoke Procedural
texture replaces the black color in
or in this case the bottom slot.
Opposite are the adjustments of Smoke.
It creates slightly pink spots.
Now,
we use the Splat texture in the top
slot.
This
creates small very irregular brown spots.
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Now
we activate two under-textures at
the same time.
We obtain a texture of skin with interesting
nuances and small imperfections in
the pigmentation.
Of
course, such a texture is not photo-realistic
but it looks good. Click
here for the texture in HD.
For
better understanding of the structure
of this texture, activate the Map Navigator
in Materials Editor.
It
is very practical to see all the complex
textures with multiple under-textures.
In this representation, we see that
the diffuse channel is Speckle with
its two colors replaced by the textures
Splat and Smoke.
Of
course, we could have fun going further,
Smoke itself being composed of two
under-textures etc...
In
the second part, we add bump for the
grain of the skin and we influences
the way in which the light reacts on
the skin...
