LuxRender Textures
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LuxRender's texture support is very powerful and flexible and supports image textures and a large number of 2D and 3D procedural textures. Textures can be used to modulate most material properties, including bump mapping and displacement - see the LuxRender_Materials page for details.
image textures
file formats
The following formats can be used as textures:
- BMP (uncompressed)
- EXR
- JPG
- PNG
- HDR (Analyze 7.5)
- TIF
- RAW (consisting of a very simple header (in ascii), then the image data)
- ASC (Ascii)
- INR (Inrimage)
- PPM/PGM (Portable Pixmap)
- PAN (Pandore-5)
- DLM (Matlab ASCII)
image texture parameters
When using an image as a texture in any material channel, a couple of parameters are available:
- gamma
- gain
- filter
procedural textures
Procedural textures are textures that are defined mathematically, which means that the texture value (or colour) at any given point is calculated by the program instead of being defined by an existing bitmap image. By combining various textures, very complex materials can be created. At the same time, using procedural textures can be very time effective as mapping is not required.
The downside of having LuxRender calculate the texture's values is that your 3d application may not be able to show previews for all textures. As many of LuxRender's procedural texture types have been taken from Blender, this program is very suitable for working with Luxrender's procedural materials. However, all textures can be assigned using any exporter.
Many of the procedural textures are fully three dimensional, which means that regardless of the shape of an object, they will always fit perfectly at edges.
Procedural textures are not filtered or anti-aliased. This is hardly ever a problem as the user can keep the specified frequencies within acceptable limits.
texture types
blender blend
use
This is one of the most important procedural textures. You can use blend textures to blend other textures together (with Stencil) or to create special effects (especially with the Map Input: Nor trick). If you use a colour band to create a custom blending, you may have to use No RGB, if the Map To value needs an intensity input.
parameters
- lin: a linear progression
- quad: a quadratic progression
- ease: a flowing, non-linear progression
- diag: a diagonal progression
- sphere: a progression with the shape of a three-dimensional ball
- halo: a quadratic progression with the shape of a three-dimensional ball
- flip XY: the direction of the progression is flipped a quarter turn
blender clouds
use
Clouds, Fire and Smoke. Also well suited to be used as bump map, giving an overall irregularity to the material.
parameters
- default: standard noise, providing an intensity only
- color: noise providing an RGB value
- soft noise/hard noise: changes the contrast and sharpness
- noisesize: the dimension of the noise table
- noisedepth: the depth of the cloud calculation - a higher number results in a long calculation time, but also in finer details
blender distorted noise
use
Often used for: grunge, very complex and versatile materials.
parameters
- distortion noise: the texture to use to distort another
- noise basis: the texture to be distorted
- noise size: the size of the noise generated
- distortion amount: the amount to which distortion noise affects noise basis
blender magic
use
This texture could be used for "Thin Film Interference" if you use it on a specular material channel using a relatively high Turbulence.
parameters
- depth: the depth of the calculation - a higher number results in a long calculation time, but also in finer details
- turbulence: the strength of the pattern
blender marble
use
Often used for marble, fire, noise with a structure.
parameters
- soft/sharp/sharper: three pre-sets, varying from soft to more clearly defined marble
- soft noise/hard noise: alternative methods for the noise function
- noisesize: the dimensions of the noise table
- noisedepth: the depth of the marble calculation - a higher value results in finer details, but longer calculation time
- turbulence: the turbulence of the sine bands.
blender musgrave
use
Often used for organic materials, although the texture is so flexible you can do almost anything with it.
parameters
This procedural texture has five noise types on which the resulting pattern can be based, which are:
- fBm
- Hetero Terrain
- Hybrid Multifractal
- Ridged Multifractal
- Multifractal
These noise types determine the manner in which the program layers successive copies of the same pattern on top of each other at varying contrasts and scales.
In addition to the five noise types, musgrave has a noise basis setting which determines the algorithm that generates the noise itself. These are the same noise basis options found in the other procedural textures.
The main noise types have four characteristics They are:
- H (Fractal Dimension) - Range 0 to 2)
Fractal dimension controls the contrast of a layer relative to the previous layer in the texture. The higher the fractal dimension, the higher the contrast between the layers, and thus the more detail will show in the texture.
- Lacu (Lacuniarity) - Range 0 to 6)
Lacuniarity controls the scaling of each layer of the musgrave texture, meaning that each additional layer will have a scale that is the inverse of the value which shows on the button. i.e. Lacu = 2 -> Scale = 1/2 original
- Octs (Octave) - Range 0 to 8)
Octave controls the number of times the original noise pattern is overlayed on itself and scaled/contrasted with the fractal dimension and lacuniarity settings.
The Hybrid Multifractal, Ridged Multifractal, and Hetero Terrain types have additional settings:
- ofst (Fractal Offset)
All three types have a Fractal Offset button labeled Ofst. This serves as a "sea level" adjustment and indicates the base height of the resulting bump map. Bump values below this threshold will be returned as zero.
- gain
Hybrid Multifractal and Ridged Multifractal both have a gain setting which determines the range of values created by the function. The higher the number, the greater the range. This is a fast way to bring out additional details in a texture where extremes are normally clipped off.
blender noise
use
This texture can be used for white noise in an animation. It is not well suited for other uses. For material roughness, use the clouds texture instead.
parameters
This texture does not have configurable parameters.
blender stucci
use
Stone, asphalt, oranges and also as a bump map to create grainy surfaces.
parameters
- plastic: the standard stucci texture
- wall in, wall out: a typical wall stucco effect with holes or bumps
- soft noise/hard noise: alternative noise types
- noisesize: the dimension of the noise table
- turbulence: the depth of the stucci calculations
blender voronoi
use
This can be used to create very convincing metals (especially the hammered effects) and organic shaders (e.g. scales, veins in skin).
parameters
This texture has seven Distance Metric options. These determine the algorithm to find the distance between cells of the texture. The options are:
- Minkovsky
- Minkovsky 4
- Minkovsky 1/2
The Minkovsky setting has a user definable value which determines the exponent (e) of the distance function (x^e + y^e + z^e)^(1/e). A value of one produces the Manhattan distance metric, a value less then one produces stars and higher values produce square cells. So all distance settings are basically the same - variations of Minkowsky.
Different shaped cells in the texture can also be obtained by using the other four settings:
- Chebychev: irregularly-sized square cells
- Manhattan: randomly-positioned diamond shaped cells
- Actual Distance/Distance Squared: irregularly-shaped rounded cells
Four Worley constants are used to calculate the distances between each cell in the texture, based on the distance metric. Adjusting these values can have some interesting effects on the end result. Check the Samples Gallery for some examples of these settings and what textures they produce.
Four different noise basis types can be used as methods to calculate colour and intensity of the texture output. This gives the Voronoi textures created with the Worley Sliders a completely different appearance. The noise basis settings are equivalent to the noise basis setting found on the other textures.
blender wood
use
This texture is particularly suited for wood materials.
parameters
- bands: the standard wood texture
- rings: this suggests wood rings
- bandnoise: gives the standard wood texture a certain degree of turbulence
- ringnoise: gives the rings type a certain degree of turbulence
- soft noise/hard noise: two noise methods
- noisesize: the dimension of the noise table
- turbulence: the turbulence of the bandnoise and ringnoise types
bilerp
The bilerp texture takes four colours as input and interpolates the colours in between. It can use uv, planar, cylindrical and spherical mapping.
checkerboard
This texture generates a two- or three-dimensional checkerboard pattern.
parameters
- 2d/3d: switches between the two- and threedimensional patterns
- closedform/supersample: anti aliasing algorithms for the 2d pattern
- uv: base the pattern on the object's uv texture mapping
- cylindrical: use a cylindrical projection (2d pattern)
- spherical: use a spherical projection (2d pattern)
- planar: use a planar projection (2d pattern)
- Ud/Vd: offset values for the planar projection
dots
This texture creates a grid of dots, each of which has a 50% chance of being displayed.
parameters
- uv: base the pattern on the object's uv texture mapping
- cylindrical: use a cylindrical projection
- spherical: use a spherical projection
- planar: use a planar projection
- ud/vd: offset values for the planar projection
FBm
The FBm (fractal Brownian motion) texture generates fractal noise, which is very suitable for use as a bump map.
parameters
- roughness: the noise roughness - low values generate smooth shapes, higher values add detail
- octaves: the range of noise frequencies - higher values create more detailed patterns
harlequin
This texture assigns a colour to each face, which can be useful for checking mesh subdivisions.
marble
The marble texture generates a marble pattern by distorting a layer pattern.
parameters
- octaves: the range of noise frequencies
- roughness: the amount of noise
- noisescale: the scale of the noise
- variation: additional variation in the pattern by offsetting through the marble layers
mix
The mix texture mixes textures by taking the average of their colour values. The proportion between the two source textures can be defined by the user.
scale
The scale texture mixes textures by multiplying their colour values, where black is zero and white is one.
uv
The uv procedural texture is intended to clearly display uv mapping. A red gradient is used for the u direction, while a green gradient indicates the v direction.
windy
The windy (or windy waves) texture is intended as a bump map or displacement map for waves. It is based on the FBm material and does not have any adjustable parameters.
wrinkled
The wrinkled texture generates turbulence noise, which is very suitable for use as a bump map.
parameters
- roughness: the noise roughness - low values generate smooth shapes, higher values add detail
- octaves: the range of noise frequencies - higher values create more detailed patterns
noise types
Each noise-based Blender texture (with the exception of Voronoi and simple noise) has a noise basis setting that defines which algorithm is used to generate the texture. The Noise Basis settings makes the procedural textures (and especially Musgrave) extremely flexible.
The noise basis governs the structural appearance of the texture.
 Blender Original |
 Original Perlin |
 Improved Perlin |
 Voronoi F1 |
 Voronoi F2 |
 Voronoi F3 |
 Voronoi F4 |
 Voronoi F2/F1 |
 Voronoi Crackle |
 Cellnoise |