slonishko opened this issue on Feb 05, 2010 ยท 19 posts
Rutra posted Fri, 05 February 2010 at 6:05 PM
Bitmap based materials may be good for small objects, if you make them fully tileable and if they wrap well around the object. But once you apply a bitmap based material to a large object and look at it from a distance, you immediately detect the recurring patterns, screaming "fake". It doesn't matter if they are fully tileable, your eyes detect the pattern (unless the bitmap is very homogeneous, like sand or similar, but even so sometimes it's still detectable).
So, procedural materials are no joke at all. They are extremely valuable for very large surfaces.
For me, the best combo is a mix of procedural with bitmap. The bitmap helps to sell the realism of the material and the procedural mix avoids recurring patterns.