UV independent uniform Procedural textures

[Jacobo]

I have fiddled around a little, read the help file again thorouhly, and found out that when I go ahead and select the object and go render>get texture it places the 3D texture uniformly onto the object... But I can't see any texture placement gizmos anywhere... I'm a little mixed up again... Why can't I do the same thing using the render tree? The two procedures are different from one another??

AJ

[Ahassan]

Hi !

I'm sorry to say but it is not in xsi what you're looking for.Or to be correct what You have it is not good for 3d(procedural) bump.I think you are looking for is a 3d placement not a projection type. Like the 3dplacement node in maya .You can get 3d textures without projection to color by using Texture Space Generator(and disable the projection method).You should connect this to the 3dtexture's coord parameter. So this will be ok for color or displace ,but not for bump.if You deform this object later ,then more problem will come ,but for start it will be ok.So the real 3d placement node is not implemented in xsi , and I was wondering why the sofimage community does not miss this feature. Why not miss the real 3d bump ,without projections(which is so difficult on organic forms).So I never get answer to this questions.(oh and it is so courious because the mayatomray translator supports this placement in maya:((((.

[Jacobo]

Oh darn it... No wonder I've been goin' nuts over this thing for days... Thanx Ahassan for your reply... I come from a LW and Maya background and I have truly gotten rid of all my prejudice about XSI and was starting to get to like it so much and this was the only problem (in texturing at least) I had run into and it's too sad that such a highend piece of software like XSI lacks this feature... U see, let alone Maya, in LW you would cover an object's colour, bump or whatever with a procedural texture and the distribution would be thorough and even, even if the object has UVs or not... In maya a procedural 3D texture would be projected onto an existing UV map and the results would always be even... Please don't get me wrong, my intension here is hardly to beat one app to the other. I am naturally seeking to do in XSI what I am used to do in other apps that I do so very easily... I just still can't get the point of having 3D textures in XSI and having to project them at the same time!!! Are not 3D textures supposed to be throughout and UV independent? And as you have mentioned, my greatest problem lies with procedural bump maps... So would you please help me get this cleared up now; what is the common practice in the industry to get around this problem? Am I to understand that XSI's procedural textures are not procedural in the true sense of the word?

I'm sorry if I sounded a bit frustrated, please do forgive me if I flamed a bit...

thanx

aj

[Ahassan]

Hi !

No problem with being frustrted, I am too since xsi 1.0 (when thinking about 3dbump):). So the 3dtextures(texture generators) are because to have the option to get 3dtexture to displace and for color,transparency......As i mentioned You can use them this way. The problem is that for bump ,it's not working.I had a lightwave and maya background too, so maybe the first thing was to me to find the 3d bump option.:(( In lw You can get beautiful 3d bump with a single mouseclick, in maya too(ok it's not so beautiful:)). I wrote some letter to some people who are in leading position (mr. Ed Harriss....) but They could not help me out. Their methods were good for a sphere ,or some other small simple object, but for large organic forms it doesn't work.(it was a kind i'have mentioned before,but you have to assign a projection to obj,i think the lollipop..but of course it's a projection too and not the same on every point of the surface).So I have talked with one of my friend (who wrote a maya to mray translator(RAYTOOLS) , and he said that the 3dbump node(maya) is not written in xsi. A people with knowledge of writing shaders could do this, but until now ,it is not written(or it's not public).
So the solving::(( You have to uv all af the surface :(( and then use 2d textures(maps,even from lightwave.It has realy beautifuls:)). this method not elegant at all ,but it has advantages too, it is faster and more precise than using procedural(in case You don't want to zoom in very close).but the result vill be quite good.Softimage users always use maps to everything.(in the help You can see this: "Maps,Maps,Maps ":).

Don't be sad Man ! This is the biggest problem in xsi :) a lot of advantages are in this package, and You will forget this one so fast , if you accept the fact:)) .of course i'm waiting for the solving ,ind i hope that someone will read this topic from softimage too ,who can answer to us!

Asi

[Jacobo]

Dear Ahassan;

Thanx for writing back again... Last night after reading your reply, I sat down real gloomy like and worked on finding a solution. The solution I came up with is unfortunately multi-faceted and takes longer to work out than just a simple drag an' drop, but I thought I should share it with you. I followed your advice and connected a projection map lookup to a '3D' texture, made the projection type purely implicit and made the repeats 0, this way the procedural texture distributes itself evenly all across no matter what the topology or UV it has... But this works only on diffuse, not on bump, peculiar enough :thumbsdow Then I created a per face UV projection, disconnected the texture from the default phong and connected it to a constant shader and baked the result onto the per face UV proj. and connected it back again to the bump value of whatever material the object has... The saddest thing is that the above connection I mentioned first can not be connected to a bump node directly... ouch! I do hope the softimage people read this thread and do something about this till version 4 comes out, cuz this is a major major thing XSI lacks... There should be more 3D textures in its arsenal and they should be 'truly' 3D... Thanx for your kind replies man... Take care...

aj

[Atyss]

Sorry to come late in this thread, but you might be interested in the following:
http://www.xsibase.com/cgi-bin/netview/YaBB.cgi?board=howididit;action=display;num=1038451082

In these examples, I used spheres, but I assure you these setups work on any kind of object.


Hope this helps
Salutations - Cheers
Bernard Lebel

[Ahassan]

Hi !

Thx a lot for the reply. the way Jacobo said is working( baking back a color map to bump by randermap) and project by face .the only problem here is that the edges of the facets are visible ,but maybe it's my fault ,maybe the sampling settings are not correct. This works well but but the result is a map too:))).
Hi Atyss ! I've read your steps about bumps, but as i see you used a spherical projection on a sphere , the result here is good but i think on an impotred organic object will be different.i think the spherical projection is not like we are looking for (in the middle not the same than on the top).without projections it is not working or did i misunderstood somethig? i've read the other replies , but i could not find usable methods to fix this .
thx a lot again

asi

[Atyss]

Hi guys,

I know where you are coming from. I also use Softimage 3D and 3ds max, and it's the same in LW and Maya: you don't need any projection and the procedural pattern is always seamless.

However this is not the case with XSI. Procedurals are not seamless, and require a projection.

You could put a spatial projection for you bump, just follow carefully the steps of my tutorial. But I agree with you, it's not as user friendly and efficient as with the other softwares. That's the only solution in the meantime (until we get new shaders or workflow alternatives).

Like I said, my setups works for any type of projection, given that you know the tricks for spatial projections.


Hope this helps
Salutations - Cheers
Bernard Lebel

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