To main page | 3dengine.org
Procedural Textures
Procedural textures are
texture maps that are generated, as opposed to those that are drawn by artists or taken from photographs.
One can generate both
diffuse,
normal (bump) and
specular maps via procedural methods.
Procedural textures can be rendered to file or supplied as a number of parameters and rendered real-time (possibly using own
shaders). Those textures often have no problems with
tiling, thereby forming
seamless textures. They rely on techniques like
coherent noise,
fractals and mathematically produced
turbulence.
Those textures are generated with user supplying a number of parameters, like
color,
roughness, number of oscillators,
masking, etc...
Advanced procedural textures can be used in games and (as shown by .debris by
theprodukkt can be indistingiushable by the eye from
photo-realistic textures).
They are often used for
terrain height map.
Most of 3D editing software, like
3ds max and
lightwave has their own versions of
gradients,
noise,
perlin noise and other procedural textures.
Personally I think the future
online games should use a lot of these to speed up the world downloading process.
Middleware
Some of the packages in "Software" section are available as
middleware to be included in developed games, therefore there is no need to pre-render and supply texture files.
Software
.werkkzeug 3 TE by
theprodukkt is the procedural texture generation software [texture generator for free, paid middleware]
libnoise can be used for procedural textures also
genetica [$150-900]
See also
Procedural world