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Gibberish
08-10-2003, 07:56 AM
I was wondering if this is possible, for my sake possible in Max 5 with the Brazil Renderer.

What I mean by under the surface, like lets say with a crytal ball you have a simple sphere, the main texture is glass but under it there is a secondary texture is an animated smoke texture or a picture of a house or something.

I know a way to do achieve this effect would be to create 2 spheres, one with a smaller radius, and boolean out the center of the bigger sphere, put in a copy of the smaller boolean sphere and put the according texture to each sphere.

But with a complicated model, lets say a robot that you would like to have a clear 'skin' and then with writhing wires underneath, would not be feasible using this method.

Is there a way through textures to achieve this effect?

On a slightly different note, how does one go about creating their own procedural textures, the base procedural like cellular or noise, in Max?
Are there any tut's for this?

Thanks in advance for any help.
leigh
08-10-2003, 03:08 PM
Texturing should never be used to compensate for a lack of geometry. In the example that you mentioned of the robot with wiring, the wires should be modelled, not done with mere textures.

Doesn't Max have multi layered textures? Most programs have an option for creating the effect you are asking about... I don't use Max much these days, but there must be a way to do it. Have you tried looking through your software documentation? (both for Max and Brazil)

However, in the example of the crystal ball, creating two spheres would be the best method, in my opinion.

Regarding the creation of procedurals, you need to write them. Not sure what programming language though, but procedurals are created by programmers, using different types of algorithms to create the fractal patterns that constitute most procedurals :)
Gibberish
08-10-2003, 05:36 PM
I was using the robot wiring as an example, what I actually want to do is have an armoured man, the armour would be a dark iron, almost black, transluscent texture, and I want there to be an animation of constantly moving spirits/ghosts, probably a gigeresque type thing, flowing underneath.
Trying to make something like this with geometry would probably be wwaaayyy too time consuming, plus with my meagre skills wouldn't look half as good or close to what I would like.

I am not sure if max has a multilayer option, I am currently on holiday and am not at my comp so I cannot check documentation, though I will once I get back.

I think the Shellac is supposed to be a multilayer but I couldn't get it to work, probably because I don't know how to use it, or it isn't a multitexture material.
EricChadwick
08-11-2003, 01:59 PM
Look up Compound Materials in the Help file. Shellac does work, although you would probably do better with a Blend or Composite in your case.

I have done similar effects to the ones you describe, and compound mats are a good method, as long as you don't get too close. As Leigh says, no material can hide the lack of good geometry... except perhaps in the case of good displacement or normal maps, but for those to work well you need to derive them from geometry in the first place...
Dargon
08-14-2003, 01:38 PM
Originally posted by Leigh
Texturing should never be used to compensate for a lack of geometry. In the example that you mentioned of the robot with wiring, the wires should be modelled, not done with mere textures.

The whole point of textures is to compensate for the lack of geometry. If you didn't use textures to compensate for lack of detail, you'd never have a bump map, never a displacement. You'd have to model all those details in by hand.
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