procedural textures for ICE

[Pancho]

In LW I'm used to work with procedural textures for modelling purposes (e.g. procedural terrain). The procedurals are the same as in the texturing node editor. They allow multiple inputs which can be node driven too. In the end you are able to create very sophisticated effects.

Just beginning to get familiar with SI, I'm wondering where all the procedurals are in the ICE editor. I heard that somebody exported the LW procedurals to SI, but didn't find any info on the web.

From Andy Moorer I got the info that some users have written their own procedurals for ICE.

Can anybody point out where I could find any of these or what kind of solutions exist in ICE to get the same functionality as in LW?

Cheers and thanks in advance

[Hirazi Blue]

As I am one of the few people apparently not coming from Lightwave,
could you please elaborate on how these procedurals function
within modeling in LW?

I've tried finding the Softimage "port" you mentioned,
but wasn't able to find it...
(Do you perhaps mean something like Thiago Costa's "Graphing in ICE" compound?)
Maybe a little more explanation would help...

;)

[Pancho]

There are several (30-40?) solid procedural textures in LW. Stuff like Turbulence, RidgedMultiFractal, MultiFractal, fbmNoise, TurbulentNoise, Checkers, Crackle, Crumple, Crust, etc. Usually you use these mathematical textures to texture your objects. In LW displacement editor you have the possibility to use the same textures to displace your object. In SI I came across turbulence so far. But I hope there's more.

[Hirazi Blue]

But if it's basically for displacement, won't the procedurals in the Render Tree suffice
(as that's where displacement is being defined generally)?

[Pancho]

I'm used to work this way in LW. So I think that ICE would be similar to the nodal displacement in LW. As there are loads of vector maths involved I presume that ICe is the correct section, but I might be wrong.

My question is why aren't these procedurals available in the ICE section so far and what kind of substitutes are available?

The displacemnts I'm going for are quite drastic and I'm not talking about micropoly displacement.

[Hirazi Blue]

Okay, we're talking two different "languages" here: what I meant with displacement was the render-time displacement, which is a RenderTree thing, what you meant was, as far as I can tell, real geometry deformations based on procedurals.
These I can envision on 2D grids and the like, but how would such a procedural influence a 3D geometry? Wouldn't this come painfully close to the "classic" deformers (albeit possibly in ICE)?
I'm trying (and failing miserably, obviously, and probably only due to my own "thickness"... )
to get a clear picture of what you want to achieve with these procedurals.

[Pancho]

That's what I want to achieve in SI.

[dwigfor]

I think you need to rendermap the procedural texture into an image. Then you can use texture map lookup. You might be able to create texture map that uses fxtree to create your effect. If you want additional procedurals for render tree, checkout:
http://www.shaders.co.uk/enhance_xsi/order.htm
http://www.shaders.co.uk/enhance_xsi/surfaces/index.htm

[Mathaeus]

As far as I know, most of 'traditional' procedural textures are based on just two: what is called 'Turbulence' node in ICE, and another one, in ICE it's called 'Worley Noise' (or, sometimes it's 'Cell') - this one was a part of PhilPack. Plus tons of gradients for interpolation.

You definitively can't expect the same naming convention in all 3d apps - if I have to use LW, probably I'll say something like 'so what on the earth is Crumple or Rigged Fractal'....

Generally, Softimage (and btw, Max too) more likes the 'original' math names, instead of descriptive names related only to particular 3d app.

I would start with factory 'Turbulize around value' node, (or just ready made modifier in last SI) and few weight maps for driving the values.

Of course, some presets wouldn't hurt, but, someone needs to create them

[Pancho]

One great thing in LW is that you can use a procedural texture to diplace another procedural texture. This way you end up with textures which are distorted. Great to break up visible patterns. Need to check whether that is possible in SI.

[Mathaeus]

Of course you can do that in ICE, as well as in Render Tree - for price of additional computation. Shouldn't be significant slowdown if you use it for modifying meshes with ICE.