ANIM 629 - Procedural Textures

What flavor of pumpkin is your favorite?

That's probably an odd question to ask, but that is one of the things we had to tackle this week in class. After having worked with photographic textures, this week we started working with procedural textures. Essentially, in any 3D program, you can add more than just bitmap images to each channel (i.e. color, bump, specular). Each program usually comes with a set of mathematical algorithms to achieve a certain 2D effect. For example, Maya has a noise node that can simulate random static. It is only random to a certain point, but it allows you a number of degrees of control that, when blended with other effects, can be quite convincing.

Take, for example, this orange peel pumpkin. This shader was generated using nothing but procedural textures. The color channel is a combination of an orange gradient with little brown specks laid on top while the bump channel was created using an inverted noise node.

The simulated black leather here uses a fractal node to simulate the little cracks in the skin.

This pumpkin is supposed to be polished hammered copper. The one problem with this texture not looking real enough right now is that there isn't an environment reflected in the copper, just light sources.

Admit it, you licked you computer screen right now, hoping that this chocolate pumpkin was real, didn't you?