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….
My First Blender Add-on
I’ve got a background in programming, so I often think about writing a plugin or add-on for Blender, but I’ve never gotten around to it. A couple of days ago I finally did write something simple, and you can download it here: Distance-Based Subdivision It’s a simple script that sets Subdivision levels for objects in…
Shader Ball
I figured if I’m making shaders I should make a shader ball. I don’t know if this is any better or worse than others out there, but it was an interesting object to think about. I tried to make it minimalist but still with helpful details. Behold: You can download it from BlendSwap here.
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…
New Look
It’s only been a couple of months, but I decided to change the look of this blog. I initially hand-coded the site using WordPress as the backend, but I decided I wanted to try turning on the commenting feature. It seemed like a good bit of work to get the commenting infrastructure merged into my…
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…
Procedural Wood Shaders In Cycles, Part 3
Ok, if you’ve followed the last two posts, we have a start on a wood shader, but it’s not there yet. Check out the first two parts if you haven’t yet: Procedural Wood Shaders in Cycles, the Beginning. Procedural Wood Shaders in Cycles, part 2 To make it better, we have to look at some…