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General => Image Sharing => Topic started by: dandelO on August 15, 2010, 08:32:50 PM

Title: Wood...
Post by: dandelO on August 15, 2010, 08:32:50 PM
Richard got my brain ticking earlier about some TG2 procedural wood, for an infestation problem he had recently.

Here's a couple of tests after a little fiddling. I'll probably make this into another shader pack selection, at some point.
Procedural wood textures could come in handy.

Woods 1, 2 and 3:
[attachimg=#]

Early days yet, I do plan on tuning, and making some more...
Title: Re: Wood...
Post by: old_blaggard on August 15, 2010, 09:49:42 PM
The first and third look quite good. Nice job!
Title: Re: Wood...
Post by: Kadri on August 15, 2010, 09:58:38 PM

Interesting :)
Title: Re: Wood...
Post by: dandelO on August 15, 2010, 10:45:32 PM
Wood 4:
[attachimg=#]

Some variations of the previous and a couple of new flavours:
[attachimg=#]

[attachimg=#]

[attachimg=#]

More to come, I'll make a texture library...
Title: Re: Wood...
Post by: Henry Blewer on August 15, 2010, 11:08:01 PM
I really like the wood ant. The textures are great.
Title: Re: Wood...
Post by: TheBlackHole on August 16, 2010, 12:09:02 AM
Cool. 8)
Title: Re: Wood...
Post by: FrankB on August 16, 2010, 01:02:43 AM
ingenious!
Title: Re: Wood...
Post by: Dune on August 16, 2010, 02:22:40 AM
Very nice, and well thought of! You can make a children's play environment with this. A huge, high reality 'blokkendoos'.
Title: Re: Wood...
Post by: reck on August 16, 2010, 03:59:39 AM
dandelO strikes again!!
Title: Re: Wood...
Post by: cyphyr on August 16, 2010, 05:04:14 AM
You got wood, hehe, he, hehe, he (Beavis n But Head referance  ;D )
Very good texture, I'll have a play when I get home.
:)
Richard
Title: Re: Wood...
Post by: schmeerlap on August 16, 2010, 05:35:30 AM
Excellent work, and impressive effects.

John
Title: Re: Wood...
Post by: domdib on August 16, 2010, 10:26:30 AM
Looks very useful.
Title: Re: Wood...
Post by: dandelO on August 16, 2010, 11:35:44 AM
Cheers, folks. I'll tinker with this for a while and make a shader set of lots of wood varieties. It can be a little tricksy, because of noise stretch directions, to get all-round compatibility with one shader. For instance, to texture a window frame with one shader could either look fine on the X/Z axis but wrongly stretched on the vertical areas or, vice-versa, know what I mean?

Anyway, they'll all be easily re-scalable and eventually(given that I can create an axis-rotation function), they should be fine in multi directions. I think that adding a small rotate function off to the side should mean that the main shader(XZ) gets plugged into the corresponding axis object parts and then the altered axis(Y) function would apply the same shader to the object parts that run vertically.

Oh well, some experimenting to do, I'll keep it as simple as possible, though...
Title: Re: Wood...
Post by: otakar on August 16, 2010, 12:56:49 PM
Nice! I wonder how using such a procedural shader (group) compares to using a tileable image (render time, memory load). For anything not too up-close this should work quite well as far as results.
Title: Re: Wood...
Post by: dandelO on August 16, 2010, 01:50:23 PM
Success!

[attachimg=#]

Only one wood shader applied to all objects. You can easily select what axis the grain will run on.

Otakar, there will be no visible tile borders at all and no repeating pattern, other than the fractal seeds used. I think it could be even better than image mapping in some cases. It's entirely colour and displacement shader based, if I was using an image map to lay a floor, I might not like the way the map is planned to the surface. I'd have to edit the map or, mess with different projections and such. I'd also need to use a very large map for decent resolution etc. Renders as fast as any other fractal colour shader does too.
With this, if I don't like a certain knot of wood beside another feature(say), I can generate a new seed in one click and it looks like I've been to the lumber yard and picked up an entirely new batch of wood, with a different woodstain if I didn't like that either.
I'm also pretty sure that I can make this into functionally alternating 'planks' (on a single surface, I mean), complete with joined seams/cracks between each 'plank'. I know it's possible, I just need to discover how, is all! :D
Title: Re: Wood...
Post by: otakar on August 16, 2010, 02:24:30 PM
Cool. I understand the advantages of the dynamic nature of this, though I think that if you use texture images with proper displacement and a power-fractal overlay it can look incredibly realistic. The question is will this be more efficient to render (sounds like it may be if you use a high res texture image). Yes, planks would be nice. For floors (like hardwood floors) I can see a big challenge, unless you make the units square (parquettes) :) Also, it may be interesting to see if larger-scale variations would be possible (ie. the wood color is not constant over different wood pieces).
Title: Re: Wood...
Post by: Hetzen on August 16, 2010, 06:32:57 PM
I think these are up there with V-Ray materials. Awesome work. I'd guess you can only apply these to a whole object rather than it's material id.
Title: Re: Wood...
Post by: dandelO on August 16, 2010, 07:46:49 PM
Quote from: Hetzen on August 16, 2010, 06:32:57 PM
...I'd guess you can only apply these to a whole object rather than it's material id...

Not at all, Sir! You could use any separate wood shader for any 'object part.

I'm just fine tuning a new, completely procedural render, post in a couple of minutes...
Title: Re: Wood...
Post by: dandelO on August 16, 2010, 08:15:49 PM
Why is Terragen 2 King? Oh, it just does stuff, like this...

[attachimg=#]

Ok, there's a couple of little notches where there shouldn't be from some of the plank ends but I can whittle these away easily, it's just a transform issue in one of the slat functions. I'd say, not bad, for a day's work!
I can envisage of all sorts of things here, different woods in different sectors, alternative slat patterns, and grain directions, crazy-paving! :D 8)
Title: Re: Wood...
Post by: Kadri on August 16, 2010, 09:28:24 PM
You crazy guy   ;D How did you do the pattern of individual woods ?
Title: Re: Wood...
Post by: dandelO on August 16, 2010, 11:06:19 PM
Fixed the misplaced slat-ends, they appear to be a bit too deep here but they're the same depth as the first decking image, the sun is just shining directly down the length of the boards from the top-right here so, the shadows of the slat-lengths aren't there to balance the shadows at the ends of each board.

[attachimg=#]

QuoteYou crazy guy    How did you do the pattern of individual woods ?

I'd like to take some time to tidy it up and see if I can make it any simpler before explaining fully how it works, Kadri. I think I can remove one or two nodes here and there first.
Basically, though, it's just careful transforms, and procedural masking and mixing, of two sin function patterns, on both the X and Z axis. I'll carry on tomorrow, bedtime, night! :)
Title: Re: Wood...
Post by: Dune on August 17, 2010, 03:23:03 AM
Your creativity is boundless, Dandel0. This is very interesting! If you'd add some dirt into the notches to get rid of the shininess, it'll be perfect flooring! Add another fractal and you have a dirty floor, sprinkle some sand over it, perhaps sharpen the same copied fractals with a color adjust to get tighter grain, this has endless possibilities. I look forward to your morning work again.
Title: Re: Wood...
Post by: domdib on August 17, 2010, 05:37:37 AM
Great work. Now, a challenge... how about some knots? I know you have some approximations of these, but I'm thinking the really gnarly kind.
Title: Re: Wood...
Post by: Henry Blewer on August 17, 2010, 08:12:06 AM
This is beautifully done.
Title: Re: Wood...
Post by: otakar on August 17, 2010, 11:43:33 AM
Ingenious, now how about some variety in offset and color? See this image: http://www.homedepot.com/catalog/productImages/300/a7/a7af1784-703c-42ca-9a75-ee9ab3bd6f69_300.jpg

I can imagine this will be quite difficult to achieve.
Title: Re: Wood...
Post by: dandelO on August 17, 2010, 02:27:19 PM
QuoteI can imagine this will be quite difficult to achieve.

I don't imagine it to be too difficult, Otakar. Just as I've planned the plank edge and plank length notches by masking, transforming, then combining their function outputs, so the inverse of these crack functions can be used to create separate 'zones' in the surface.
I just need to implement the plank zone inverts to describe where each wood shader is placed, really, this isn't going to be hard, not now that I have the method of masking and combining the alternating slat functions, that was the tricky part.

I've really made a giant leap yesterday(for me, anyway) playing with functions for this. The hardest part was really masking the lines, now that I have that in the bag, as I said yesterday, I am seeing really many, many ways to lay different woods in different zones, alternating grain on a single surface, there are really no limits now. I'll keep at this, it's a really promising technique, that before I'd have had to have relied on imported b+w masks per zone etc.

I've learned a lot over the past day and night and, it never would have happened without seeing Cypher's camping trip photos and wanting to make a TG scene from a picture in his album. I did, a half-arsed attempt(using image mapped wood) and Richard got me thinking about how to do it procedurally. Give that man a pat on the back, guys! :)

(When I eventually do retry the scene, I will use a variation of wood4 on the previous page, need to adapt the grain and colours a little)
Title: Re: Wood...
Post by: Gannaingh on August 17, 2010, 02:42:46 PM
Awesome work, this looks great!
Title: Re: Wood...
Post by: dandelO on August 17, 2010, 02:46:32 PM
Haha, I keep thinking of Planck length (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck_length) through all of this.

Now, how can I incorporate some TG2 quantum physics to speed up the creation process? And, why do I need a vacuum for laminated flooring? Surely a brush is fine! :D
Title: Re: Wood...
Post by: dandelO on August 17, 2010, 02:51:47 PM
Domdib: Some high but localised warping of the heavier noise areas of any given wood, will create some nice knots in the surface.

Cheers, folks!
Title: Re: Wood...
Post by: dandelO on August 17, 2010, 06:26:58 PM
Here's a nice shot of a surface with alternating woods, I've also removed the reflectivity from between the cracks:

[attachimg=#]

This is just step 1 in adding some localised variation, you'll notice it only alternates in one direction, for now...
Title: Re: Wood...
Post by: Henry Blewer on August 17, 2010, 06:56:42 PM
Impressive. This is very cool.
Title: Re: Wood...
Post by: Dune on August 18, 2010, 02:38:58 AM
Great Dandel0, and Richard, here's the pat on the back. PAT. How about a tiny, subtle warp (and vein displacement) to get rough planking? You can do wonders...
Title: Re: Wood...
Post by: glen5700 on August 18, 2010, 08:02:34 AM
Dandel0, nice job on the wood - I really like how it's coming along. Have you tried doing any end grain yet?

It will be cool to see how you cooked this shader up.

Glen

Here is an example of some end grain - (http://www.3ddigitalgraphics.com/darktree/dt_wood.jpg)
Title: Re: Wood...
Post by: dandelO on August 18, 2010, 01:13:46 PM
Cheers, folks.

Glen, the main wood texture, for now, is plain old fractals. I think I'd need to create some kind of warped sine to plan side-on to the desired surface. I hadn't actually thought of the end grains at all yet, I've been keeping my attention to functional masking of separate shaders to apply to a single surface until now. I'll see what this looks like on the end grain, I might be pleasantly surprised.
If not, though, I'll keep this in mind and have a go later on, a good point, that I hadn't considered, cheers! :)
Title: Re: Wood...
Post by: dandelO on August 19, 2010, 10:42:50 AM
Wood Flooring 1 - by dandelO: http://forums.planetside.co.uk/index.php?topic=10584.msg108916#msg108916
Title: Re: Wood...
Post by: glen5700 on August 19, 2010, 09:16:49 PM
My guess would be that it wouldn't work then (hope I'm wrong), you might get pleasing end grain but I imagine it wouldn't be circular rings.

Anyhow your wood is looking great.

Glen
Title: Re: Wood...
Post by: MacGyver on August 26, 2010, 12:37:05 PM
Quote from: glen5700 on August 19, 2010, 09:16:49 PM
My guess would be that it wouldn't work then (hope I'm wrong), you might get pleasing end grain but I imagine it wouldn't be circular rings.

Anyhow your wood is looking great.

Glen

No pun intended I hope ;D
Cheers!