Procedural textures versus regular ones?

[lafnjack]

Sorry for my recent barrage of questions.

According to the Carrara Handbook by Mike De La Flor, I got the impression that Carrara renders quicker with procedural textures than with applied textures created in Photoshop.
I know other programs have said the converse is true.

I just wanted to confirm if anyone has had any experience and can verify this. I could have very well MISUNDERSTOOD what Mr. De La Flor said.

Thanks,
John

[LoneGunman]

Actually none of the above, depends on complexity of the procedural texture, and when it comes to photo textures, depends on the size, trick is always to keep complexity to minimum, or size to the minimum when it comes to photo textures.

There is no real benchmark to compare

[edgework]

If you restrict yourself to single levels, the rendering speed doesn't seem to suffer. For example, a color gradient with a lumberyard shader. But since you can stack them up to whatever depth you desire, it's easy to compound the calculations required. Such an approach enhances realism, but you can take a hit in speed.

The real advantage with procedurals is that they don't depend on UV mapping and thus provide uniform texturing over the entire surface of the model. I happen to be a big fan of Carrara's procedurals, particularly when enhanced by DCG's Shader Ops and Shaders Plus, and Inagoni's Veloute. But it is true that to coax realism out of them, requires a lot of calculations.

[LoneGunman]

Originally Posted by edgework

...The real advantage with procedurals is that they don't depend on UV mapping and thus provide uniform texturing over the entire surface of the model...

Yep, true that, however, it would be nice if we could "bake" them to UV's without plugins...

[lafnjack]

Thanks for the replies gentlemen! Much appreciated!

John

[jbshorty]

Originally Posted by LoneGunman

Yep, true that, however, it would be nice if we could "bake" them to UV's without plugins...

Actually you can bake the texture map when you export an object, without using any plug-ins. So just do a dummy export to grab the texture. But Carrara's baker only grabs the diffuse (color) channel. Inagoni's Baker plug-in gives you many more options and channels...

shorty

[Nichod]

Some other things to note.

While you can set some of the procedurals to map to a UV. The result tends to not be the same as local, scaling is one factor thats an issue and requires you to tweak the UV map. If you want to avoid that. Eric's Procedural Lock is another must have plugin that locks the local coordinates of the procedural. That way you can animate the object and not lose how they are mapped. A great plugin in my opinion.

Find it here: http://digitalcarversguild.com/plugin.php?ProductId=13

[lafnjack]

Looks like another plug-in I want.

Thanks for the heads up!
John