Procedural textures that don't swim on an envelope

[Stoehr]

I think - I'm not positive - I think you need to change the order of any modeling operators, such as twist, to happen after you apply the texture. I think. I'm still a little new to this program too.

[Serial]

hi

seems like you haven't frozen your texture projections, go to the texture editor and freeze your projections from there. Also if you are happy with your procedural textures you can rendermap them into bitmap so your scene will render faster

[Augurium]

Thanks for the input guys…..

I did try to freeze the projection from the only place that I did find that option: in the UVW Transformation section of the projections property panel. I am using only one texture projection for all the different procedurals which I hope is fine. The test render still had the swimming effect so it seems that freezing had no effect; or I did something wrong. I'm still looking into other solutions.

Once I got the hang of developing procedural textures I began to like it because I find it easier to develop detailed effects without seams on complex organic geometry. Besides, my Photoshop skills are a little lacking. I do intend to do a further combination of textures using bitmaps (mainly some alpha channel stuff for detail) once I figure this problem out.

As far as render mapping the procedurals to a bitmap I am not sure if that will work as cleanly or without seams on this geometry especially when I am going to put it through many different views or perspectives via detailed animation.


Please continue to bring on the ideas…. I don’t believe I’m the only one who suffers this problem… though I did expect this rather simple capability to be much easier in this great and advanced program.

[Soeren Nielsen]

Since XSI is node based, you need to have the operators applied in the right order. Having them in the wrong order, might be what is causing your problem.

[chikega]

Originally posted by Serial
hi
seems like you haven't frozen your texture projections, go to the texture editor and freeze your projections from there. Also if you are happy with your procedural textures you can rendermap them into bitmap so your scene will render faster

Serial, is right. UV map it and then bake the procedural into the UV to avoid the texture swimming.:)

[Augurium]

Is UV mapping and baking the only solution for this problem? I expected a non-workaround for procedural texturing otherwise what is the point of it? Will UV mapping give just as clean and seamless of an effect on detailed geometry?

As far as the order of my operators, since I froze the modeling history I don't have any operators applied. The only operator I have is the envelope operator for the bones. I also have a couple of polygon clusters for selection purposes.

Correct me if I'm wrong but baking a texture does not give a 360 degree representation of the texture map because it is limited to what the camera sees. So how would one overcome this without having all kinds of seams when having to bake multiple perspectives of the geometry i.e. back, front, inside etc... to cover all the different areas? A somewhat detailed explanation would help because I am still new to this app.

I appreciate all the input guys...:)

[Ablefish]

No, you don't necessarily need to bake the texture out into a rendermap. And you don't need to freeze your whole object's construction history.

If you're using a Spatial UV projection, you do need to Freeze the GeoTxtOp though - that will lock your UVs into place on the surface of your geometry. I would have sworn that there was a way to Mute the projection so that you didn't need to freeze it (destructive), like the other projection types... Maybe I'm not awake enough yet.

And the key is not just using the freeze button on the MCP - select the GeoTxtOp created when you got the Spatial projection and right-click on it in an explorer - choose freeze. This will leave your Modeling history and any other history stacks on projections, weightmaps, etc etc intact.

Oh, and getting back to rendermapping (baking) - it's not dependant on the camera - it does consider 360 degrees. Baking to a Unique UVs projection is the recommended way to avoid any seams or stretching.

[Augurium]

Things have been keeping me busy..... thanks for the reply Ablefish. I tried your idea quickly on a sphere and it seems to work nicely... thanks again. Now I will try to apply it to my character (once I make the time) and see how it turns out.

I wonder if procedural texturing is a common practice for the CG artists out there....

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