Hey all, Is it just me, or... I'm refering to the manual, pages 176 (from the heading Procedural colors) to about page 188. Is this actually written in english??? LOL. What I mean is, no matter how many times I read it, I can't for the life of me figure out how the correlation between a filter and the function work (I cant 'visualise it' in my head at all) I've been playing with procedural textures for about a week now, and I have to say that they are so massivly underused its frightning! These things are amazing and totally underestimated. My problem is that I just don't have any clue as to how to 'work out' which ones i need to create a certain effect. For example I wanted to see how realistic I could make wood with procedural textures, and in the end I got there. But I didnt get there with any 'knowledge' of using filters etc... All I did was play around until I got the right look and feel. For my mind this cannot be the way to do this. There are not hundreds of preset filters and functions for nothing! They can be used in a controlled manner to create exactly the textures you need... But I'm driving myself nuts trying to find an easy way to work out how. Can anyone throw some light on this for me? Because the manual's "This is how it works: for each point of the surface, the function calculates a... blah blah blah... Huh?? Just dosn't do it for me :) Cheers, Kutter

Attached Link: http://sittingblue.50megs.com/tutorials/filters/index.htm

I think creating a wood texture that looks good close-up is very difficult using Vue's procedural functions.

For large scale wood production that has no tiling, I've been experimenting with mixing two materials with mapped pictures. The idea is to use the mixing function to break up the tiling.

Charles

Hi Kutter - No, it's not just you! I can understand what it says in the manual and in Charles' detailed tutorial, but unfortunately that understanding still doesn't translate into any intuitive feel as to what effect any particular filter/function is going to have. The manual tells me quite a bit of what I would need to know in order to write a programming routine to process a filter, but precious little to help in visualising their effect. I have resigned myself to the trial-and-error approach with the uncertain hope that some underlying principles will eventually be absorbed by osmosis.

WOW Flycatcher, I have never quite seen anything so complicated, put so expertly! You didn't just hit the nail on the head so much as smashed it through in one hit! This is exactly what I'm talking about. I should really have made myself clearer, but yes, I too understand the principle, and the actual effect. Charles' tutorial is great, and as you rightly say the manual points out what the 'program' is doing, but putting it all together is a headache :) But thank you for showing me that I'm not the only one in Trial and Error hell :) All the best, Kutter