When I first started using Blender procedural materials, I wondered how to get more than one material onto an object. In other systems I’d used, there was the idea of a “material map,” which was a grayscale image that defined where to put different colors or materials. For example, an image like this: …could be…
Tag: shader
Procedural Wood: From Oak To Maple, Part 2
Last time we edited the scale of the wood. You might’ve noticed that in the Oak shader, the Y-coordinate was the same as X- and Z-, and now it’s 1. That’s something I realized was a mistake before, because we didn’t really want to scale the shader along the Y-axis. By making it 1, we’ll…
Procedural Wood: From Oak to Maple, Part 1
I wanted to show an example of a wood that is popularly used, but has different characteristics than Red Oak. I decided on Maple as I’ve worked on a Maple shader before and it’s different enough, yet there are enough similarities that the Oak shader is helpful. I was going to start at an earlier…
IMPORTANT: I’m Still Learning Too!
It’s been a while since my last post, and I was thinking I really need to get back into this. Fortunately, the Universe responded with a swift kick in the pants in the form of an astute reader named Ethos. Ethos has experience in woodworking, and not only asked me some great questions about the…
Corundum Conundrum
I started looking into how to create a realistic granite shader. While researching, I learned a lot of interesting things about gems and minerals and got distracted. For example, I didn’t know that rubies and sapphires are just variations of the same stone, called corundum. I thought it might be interesting to try to create…
More About Texture Coordinates
While creating the Red Oak shader, we used the “Object” coordinates: I mentioned that this will make the wood shader three-dimensional, as if our objects are carved out of a solid block of wood. The reason is that the Object used for the coordinates is by default the object that the shader is applied to….
The Thing About Rings
It’s worth pointing out that I’m showing you one way that I’ve created wood shaders, but the Cycles nodes are so flexible that there are often many ways to accomplish the same thing. For example, in the first post in the Procedural Wood series (The Beginning), I showed how to create rings based on the equation of…
Procedural Wood Shaders in Cycles: Red Oak Finale
If you haven’t been following along, I recommend starting with part 1 and working through the parts. We’re going to pick up where we left off with the last post, and really take this wood up a level. Part 1 is here: Procedural Wood Shaders in Cycles, the Beginning Before we start, disconnect the Displacement…
A Slight Diversion: Cleanup
It occurred to me that as our shader gets more complicated, we haven’t really been doing anything to make it neater. I’d like to take a few moments to clean it up a bit before we go any farther. As you make your own shaders this is a good habit, especially if you want to…
Procedural Wood Shaders in Cycles, Part 4: Rays
If you haven’t read parts 1, 2, and 3, you ought to read them to get context on where we are on the wood journey! Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Last time we changed the grain pattern to match the little holes that run through the length of the wood. This time we’re going…