Quote - Some noise-type nodes (clouds, tile with turbulence) follow the figure's UV map, others follow it's coordinates. When you have a figure or prop who's UV map does not completely fill the space from 0 to 1 (true of all creatures I've seen so far) then there are areas where the UV space on the figure are discontinuous. Any effect driven by UV will form seams in those areas.

The solution for seamless procedurals on a figure is to turn on a node's Global_Coordinates option if it has one - this changes the node's internal driver from UV space to 3D space. No more seams.

 

I was a bit puzzled by that, since I've always thought the 2D texture nodes and some of the variable nodes (u, v, du, dv etc) were the only ones that took any notice at all of the UV map, so I did some tests.

I built a cube, mapped it one way to take up all of UV space and mapped it another way to take up just one small patch of UV space with a 180 degree rotation and then also built a version with no UV map at all.  I put the three versions in the same position and rendered them one at a time, using the render wipe to compare the renders.  The was no difference whatsoever for the noise or clouds nodes (the tile node is a 2D node, so it is UV mapping dependant).  Moreover, noise and clouds rendered seamlessly even though I had all six faces separated on the uv maps.

Those nodes, like the other 3D nodes, always use 3D space.  What the Global_Coordinates option does is switch between local 3D space (which follows the object around when you move it) to global 3D space, which stays put, even if you move the object.  If you have that option off, the texture will always look the same no matter how you scale or move the object.  If you have it on, then the texture you see corresponds to the particular bit of space the object is in at the time you render.  If you animate an object moving slowly with global coords on, you'll see how the object moves through the texture, while the texture stays put.

As far as I know, there are no nodes that offer a choice between UV and 3d coords - just a choice between local 3d and global 3d.

So where are the seams coming from?  Well, if there are any 2d nodes in the material, such as tile or the UV variable nodes, that will cause UV seams.  Also, the noise, granite and cellular nodes have striations in them oriented to the three coordinate axes.  That can give a seamlike appearance, although where it shows up isn't related to UV seams.  

BTW bagginsbill, I love matmatic.  It's absolutely brilliant.  It's made it possible for me to quickly put together really complex things I might not have been able to do at all otherwise.  Brilliant work and thanks very much.  It's been the best addition to my Poser tool set in a long time :-)

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