Procedurals?

[Dreamwave]

http://members.chello.nl/t.oudeblenke/procedurals.jpg

these are Lightwave's procedurals (1 at a time)
with different procedurals layered on eachother you can archieve almost every surface or material.

I know .:STRIKE:. uses procedurals almost everywhere and Leigh likes to paint everything herself, they can both get realistic looking surfaces but for imagemaps you don't need superb drawing skills and procedurals are pretty hard to master (if you ask me)

[leigh]

What is a procedural and what are they used for?

Procedurals are fractal patterns generated by mathematical algorithms to create patterns that you can use for texturing. Different software packages offer different kinda of procedurals, although essentially they are pretty similar from program to program.

Essentially you can use them to create or enhance textures. You use them as you would an image map, by assigning them to your various surface channels.

Also, how do you know if your material is a procedural?

Well, procedurals are built-in to your software package. So if you click a button saying "Perlin Marble" or whatever, that is a procedural. Ummm... this is a weird question. You can SEE it is a procedural when you use it in your surface editor :surprised

I personally don't recommend that beginners use procedurals though, as they can be tricky to control. All too often, people just use them with their default settings, so when you look at their renders, you can IMMEDIATELY see that they are using procedurals.

[Xilica]

as awkward as these questions have been, they have cleared alot of stuff up!

thanks Leigh :D

[Pharaun]

When doing big complex scenes, procedurals are nice to use for stuff like background objects. Mountains etc etc, but for important scene objects - keep the old fashioned style. ;)

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