Wood

Category: Texture

Shader Family: Texture

Output: Color

Simulates wood surfaces by using a complex fractal. Realistic effects can easily be achieved by tweaking the many parameters listed below. This shader can simulate mahogany, rosewood, pine, and more. You can also specify the age of the wood and introduce grain into the wood.

The wood shader is made up of concentric rings of layers that you can distort with a fractal to add a natural irregularity to the layers.

Texture

Name	The shader's name. Enter any name you like, or leave the default.

Texture Space

Selects the texture projection to use. See Specifying a Texture Projection [Texturing].

Bump Mapping

Enable	Switches bump mapping on or off.
Use Alpha	Uses the texture's alpha channel to achieve a bump map.
Factor	Defines how "bumpy" the bump map will be. A negative value inverts the bump inward; a positive bump map factor bumps outward.
Step	Controls the U, V, and Z steps of a bump map. Use this parameter to "smooth" bumps or make them more jagged.

Wood

Name	The shader's name. Enter any name you like, or leave the default.
Filler	Defines the color of the filler portion of the wood. This color fades into the vein portion of the layer. Playing with this parameter will create different types of wood.
Vein	Defines the color of the vein in the wood.
Vein Spread	Defines how much of the vein color spreads into the filler color of the wood.

Copy Alpha to RGB

When activated, multiplies the RGB channels with the alpha channel by the factor defined in the Alpha Strength parameter.

Alpha Strength

Determines the factor by which the Alpha is multiplied with the RGB channels.

Grain

Name	The shader's name. Enter any name you like, or leave the default.
Color	Defines the color of the wood grain.
Bias	Defines how much contrast there is between the grain color and the wood colors (vein and filler).
Size	Defines the size of the grains in the wood.
Density	Defines the density of the grains in the wood. If the Grain Bias parameter is set to 1.0, then a value of 1.0 in Grain Density results in the wood being completely covered with grain.

Aging

Name	The shader's name. Enter any name you like, or leave the default.
Wobbly Structure	When on, the wood becomes slightly deformed and is no longer contained in a unit square, much like melted wood. For this parameter to have an effect, the fractal amplitude cannot be 0.
Age	Defines the "age" of the wood and determines how many layers it takes to reach the full layer size.

Layer

Size	Defines the size of the layer. It is based on a 0 to 1 scale.
Random	Because all layers are not created equally (as in real life; i.e., weather, etc.), this parameter affects the amount of variation there is in the size of layers.

Center

U, V	Defines the U and V points of origin of the layers.

Fractal

Name	The shader's name. Enter any name you like, or leave the default.
Type	The algorithm for the pattern: Legacy produces the same pattern as in versions prior to Softimage 2013. Default produces the same pattern as shown in High Quality display mode.
Ratio	Defines the amplitude of the successive iterations relative to the current one. For values less than 1, successive iterations have a lower amplitude; for values greater than 1, the iterations have a higher amplitude and the fractal becomes unbounded.
Complexity	The maximum number of noise iterations used when calculating the fractal.
Amp U, V	Defines the base U and V amplitudes of the fractal used to calculate this texture. This parameter applies to the amplitude of the first iteration; successive iterations may raise the amplitude further.
Freq	Defines the frequency of the fractal in the X, Y, and Z directions. High values slow down rendering time.
Absolute	When on, the fractal procedure uses a slightly different algorithm, which causes discontinuities in the fractal itself. This creates the impression of turbulence.

Advanced

Alternate

U, V, Z

Specifies whether every other copy of the repetition should be reversed so that the successive copies of the texture are alternated.

Repeats

Texture Repeats

Contains the repetition factor in X,Y, and Z. A value of 2, for example, shrinks the texture so that it fits twice in a [0..1] interval.

UV Remap

Minimum, Maximum

Determines the remapping of the texture image. For a 2D image, only X and Y are used.

Render Tree Usage

Color parameters can be connected to other textures or image processing shaders. A texture's scalar parameters can be altered to create interesting effects by applying Texture Generator shaders to them. For example, the Vein Spread parameter can be controlled with the Fractal Texture Generator shader.

A texture shader has seemingly limitless capabilities in a render tree. It can texture an object, be used as a camera or light projection, define bump or displacement maps, or be blended with any number of other textures to create any effect.