What is the opposite of procedural (in terms of 3D/CG)?

Hi Guys,

I am currently writing my Bachelor Thesis on procedural and generative design and I am not sure how to describe the opposite of procedural techniques and workflows.

Is there a commonly used term or is it just as simple as "non-procedural"? ..which sounds a bit..

All suggestions are welcome

Cheers

I think if you were to going to classify them all as either "procedural" or "non-procedural" that would be correct. However, I have also seen "Image Textures" used to describe "non-procedural" textures as well.

There is the term 'destructive'.
That if you need to tweak something well up the chain (in say the construction history) then you have to re-build everything else below it as the end result looks/is 'destroyed'.

A procedural system is 'non-destructive'.

analog?
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That's not the same thing, though. Adding a new photoshop layer and hand-painting on it is non-destrucutive, but it's definitely not procedural.

handmade? bespoke?

Can a photoshop layer derive something from another layer?
Does it update if that layer is edited?

(don't know i don't use PS much these days)

I would call non-proceduralism something akin to manual content, or non-scalable content

I'd say non-procedural is the most common. Does it matter as long as the read understands and it gets the point across. You can say custom textures too.

Technically speaking the opposite of procedural is substantive, something that constantly commits to altering the state of something instead of the chain of operations that produces it.

Another way to look at it is irreversible in terms of change (the point of proceduralism is change is always reversible and can be surmised, irreversibility means change is permanent).

And lastly you have serial, but that usually requires further identification as proceduralism can be serial, just you retain control on the sequence, whereas serialised substantive doesn't.

There isn't a CG equivalent agreed upon that I know of, things are either procedural, or they aren't, but picking up from other disciplines serial substantivation is the closest you will get.

The term we informally use around here is "raster".

I always thought that procedural = implicit, non-procedural = explicit.

Thanks guys for all your thoughts. I decided to go with non-procedural, which seems to be to most suitable and least misleading term.

Thanks.

Yeah, I'd go with procedural/non-procedural, or destructive/non-destructive
It's non-destructive to the rest of the file, but it's destructive to the layer itself. Non-destructive would be using masks etc.

Sorry, I just had to...

What is the opposite of procedural?