A little background on textures (long!)

[Gary David Bouton]

As we discuss "really good wood" here on the forum, I'd like to toss out some background information on the topic. Actually, there are at least three brilliant mathematicians, all of them ex-PIXAR "mafia", who are guiding the design of 3D applications.

First of all Ed Musgrave is listed in the About for Bryce. Dr. Musgrove is big on fractal landscapes. He has in one of my books Mt. Bryce rendered in his own style (he does this stuff by writing code...programmers write interfaces for us mere mortals), and this is probably where the software program Bryce first got its name--from looking at Musgrave's work. Because this fellow is so fractal oriented, you have super control these days over procedural textures.

Darwin Peachy is also listed as a Bryce contributor. I do not know much about him except he worked on the computer graphics at LucasArts before the company was spun off to become PIXAR. He, too is a mathematician first, and a programmer second.

Finally, Terragen has made reference to Ken Perlin in their About box. He's either helped the creators of Terragen, or they have studied his papers. I believe it is Ken who has contributed the realistic water and WONDERful clouds.

To close, a word on procedural textures. Many of the aforementioned and pioneers in the field have mixed feelings about both texture mapping (pasting a decal on a model's skin) and procedural textures. Texture mapping is easy; you scout down a picture and then wrap the thing correctly from your viewpoint. But is was Perlin who first got into the 3D procedural textures that we use (they are genrally wood, stone, and marble). The concept here is that you are immersing your model in a 3D volume of texture and where the edges of the model end, the texture clings to its sides, so there is never discontinuity across vertices. But a Macromedia programmer cautioned me about procedural textures back when I was middle-aged and stupid: He said:1.)A fractal can be part of a procedural texture, but a procedural texture doesn't necessarily need a fractal equation within it. And I won't bore you here with the nature of fractal math...but I had a positively wonder experience learning from him.

2.) (the last thing). The programmer said:"There's procedural textures and there's procedural textures. A procedural texture can look exceptionally lifelike if it's written correctly. But there are not enough skilled mathematicians devoting their time to creating lifelike procedural textures.

PIXAR probably has created the best collection of procedural textures, except they can only plug into Showplace for the Mac, and that program no longer is sold, or to some of the students on the east coast doing CGI at the universities, using something called Birney, an offshoot of PIXAR RenderMan technology.

Read all you can is my advice. I myself write "flash" books--books specific to a version of software, and my book falls out of publish in about 18 months. There are also Addison-Weseley books, written by such notable authors as the Watts brothers, that will make your head hurt, and finally, there are college papers just about everywhere on the Web...ya only have to look for them (University of Utah is a good place to start).


My Best,

Gary David Bouton
Gary@GaryDavidBouton.com
Free education! The Writings Web site
and the updated GaryWorld Gallery is pretty okay, too.

[Gary David Bouton]

As we discuss "really good wood" here on the forum, I'd like to toss out some background information on the topic. Actually, there are at least three brilliant mathematicians, all of them ex-PIXAR "mafia", who are guiding the design of 3D applications.

First of all Ed Musgrave is listed in the About for Bryce. Dr. Musgrove is big on fractal landscapes. He has in one of my books Mt. Bryce rendered in his own style (he does this stuff by writing code...programmers write interfaces for us mere mortals), and this is probably where the software program Bryce first got its name--from looking at Musgrave's work. Because this fellow is so fractal oriented, you have super control these days over procedural textures.

Darwin Peachy is also listed as a Bryce contributor. I do not know much about him except he worked on the computer graphics at LucasArts before the company was spun off to become PIXAR. He, too is a mathematician first, and a programmer second.

Finally, Terragen has made reference to Ken Perlin in their About box. He's either helped the creators of Terragen, or they have studied his papers. I believe it is Ken who has contributed the realistic water and WONDERful clouds.

To close, a word on procedural textures. Many of the aforementioned and pioneers in the field have mixed feelings about both texture mapping (pasting a decal on a model's skin) and procedural textures. Texture mapping is easy; you scout down a picture and then wrap the thing correctly from your viewpoint. But is was Perlin who first got into the 3D procedural textures that we use (they are genrally wood, stone, and marble). The concept here is that you are immersing your model in a 3D volume of texture and where the edges of the model end, the texture clings to its sides, so there is never discontinuity across vertices. But a Macromedia programmer cautioned me about procedural textures back when I was middle-aged and stupid: He said:1.)A fractal can be part of a procedural texture, but a procedural texture doesn't necessarily need a fractal equation within it. And I won't bore you here with the nature of fractal math...but I had a positively wonder experience learning from him.

2.) (the last thing). The programmer said:"There's procedural textures and there's procedural textures. A procedural texture can look exceptionally lifelike if it's written correctly. But there are not enough skilled mathematicians devoting their time to creating lifelike procedural textures.

PIXAR probably has created the best collection of procedural textures, except they can only plug into Showplace for the Mac, and that program no longer is sold, or to some of the students on the east coast doing CGI at the universities, using something called Birney, an offshoot of PIXAR RenderMan technology.

Read all you can is my advice. I myself write "flash" books--books specific to a version of software, and my book falls out of publish in about 18 months. There are also Addison-Weseley books, written by such notable authors as the Watts brothers, that will make your head hurt, and finally, there are college papers just about everywhere on the Web...ya only have to look for them (University of Utah is a good place to start).


My Best,

Gary David Bouton
Gary@GaryDavidBouton.com
Free education! The Writings Web site
and the updated GaryWorld Gallery is pretty okay, too.

[Erik Heyninck]

Thse coincidences happen all the time:
I wonder how comes that my Temp Internet Files, after emptying is still some 8 Meg fat, how comes that the index.dat in cookies has tripled in volume, how come quick search is linked to an extremely well hidden system that keeps track of all our movements on the PC, and then I start reading Cryptonomicon by Stephenson...the book falls into my hands, literally. I revisit Gödel, Whitehead, Russell,...gosh...what's happening? I always wondered about security leaks in Windows because I can't imagine the most powerful company in the world making these mistakes out of sheer negligence...

Yeah, read as much as you can, indeed, and be aware. As soon as I can afford it, I make a linux triple protected server and firewall, and disconnect this PC from the net. Virusses are child's play, compared to this. Just try under DOS to see what is inside the TIF map, the cookies map, and ask yourselves why this has to be so extremely well hidden. Add this to the security leaks and see the light... [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_eek.gif[/img]

[randyrives]

Gary,

Thanks for the interesting reading. I have heard or Perlin procedures for textures, never knew where the name came from.


--Randy

[jens g.r. benthien]

Gary,

quite interesting. I always wanted to 'code' textures myself, but since I'm not a math prof, I surrendered. It's amazing how these guys can develop a texture 'just by typing some code'.

Reminds me of POV ray - there are some freaks out there who can 'code' complex scenes with it, which look absolutely fantastic and stunning. All they do is defining objects, lights, environments with formulas... they are really creative in scientific terms.

BTW, one guy from Sweden who built 3D scenes this way was the reason for me to purchase my first 3D application (you know, one of these versions for dummies and Forest Gumps who just can use their mouse to develop products, objects etc) ;-}

To compensate my non-existing math know how I am collecting textures from everywhere - I always have my 35mm camera with me. And if I have enough time, I transform some of them to seamless textures like Marlin Studios (http://www.marlinstudios.com). BTW, they offer a hughe collection of hi res textures, seamless textures and hard to find textures incl. bumpmaps, but none of them are free. But IMHO they are worth the investment.

Another vendor of good textures is http://textures3d.com. And for Cinema users http://welcome.to/deepshade (however, some shaders are not compatible with v7 ! ).

Just for your info and research - it's always an experience to research new resources.

jens

jens g.r. benthien
designer
http://jens.highspeedweb.net