This is the supporting topic for my "Poser 11 compond node for random colour tiles" freebie in the Renderosity Free Stuff.

Further details, including a link to the item in the Renderosity Free Stuff area will be added in the next post once the freestuff upload has been approved.

(Note: This topic needs to be in place before I actually upload the freestuff item so that I can link to this topic from the freestuff item)

The upload has now been approved and you can find it in the Renderosity FreeStuff here:

Poser 11 compond node for creating random colour tiles

Well, it was. However, I needed to make a couple of corrections to the description which means that it's been put back into 'pending' status until it receives staff approval again.

HOW TO GET TILES IN SHADES OF A SINGLE COLOUR

Simply set the weights for the colour channels you want to 1 leaving the others at 0.

For red , green, or blue tiles simply set the appropriate weight value to 1 leaving the other two at 0. Note that the random pattern is the same for all three.

Similarly for cyan, yellow, or magenta tiles - simply set the two appropriate weight vaues to 1 leaving the third at 0. Note that the random pattern is the same for all three, but different from the previous three, although it appears to incorporate that random pattern.

If you set all three weights to 1 you'll get grey tiles. Note that the random pattern is different from the two pprevious patterns although it does appear to incorporate them.

HOW TO CHANGE THE RANDOM PATTERN

Simply set Random_Tweak to any* non zero value.

Using 0, 1 and 2 with the red tiles.

Using 0, 1 and 2 with the multi-colour tiles.

*Any number should be okay - postive, negative, integer, non-integer, small, large, whatever. Single positive digits seems fine to me.

HOW TO ENSURE ONE CHANNEL ALWAYS HAS A HIGHER VALUE (USING JUST TWO CHANNELS)

Set the weight of the colour that you want to have the higher value to 2, and the other to 1, leaving the unused channel at 0

Blue-greens and green-blues

Red-greens and green-reds

 Blue-reds and red-blues

HOW TO ENSURE ONE CHANNEL ALWAYS HAS THE HIGHEST VALUE, ANOTHER ALWAYS HAS THE LOWEST, AND THE THIRD IS ALWAYS IN BETWEEN

Set the weight of your highest channel to 3, the middle channel to 2, and the lowest to 1

Red-green-blues and red-blue-greens

Green-red-blues and green-blue-reds

Blue-red-greens and blue-green-reds

A FEW OTHER COMBINATIONS INCLUDING A RULE OF THUMB 

If you're using just 1 channel then weight can only be 1, with 2 channels weight can be 1 or 2, and with 3 channels weight can be 1, 2 or 3

One channel - only 100 (in any order) works. 200 and 300 produce black tiles

Two channels with both weights set the same - 110 (in any order) works (we knew that before), 220 works (and produces lighter tiles than 110), 330 doesn't work.

Three channels with all weights the same - 111, 222, and 333 all work, each producing lighter greys than the previous one

Three channels, 311 (in any order), 322 and 333

For anybody who wants to know how it does what it does... well, we have to expand the compound node and start looking at the spaghetti...

What d'you mean, "That doesn't help ?" 

Okay, here's a lightly annotated version that splits into into a few chunks

Rather than try and explain what's going on I'll start by pointing you at my Using 3D nodes (Cellular) with 2D UV maps ? topic on the Poser Technical forum here at Renderosity. You'll notice that the more-or-less final shader that I ended up with over there has the three fBm nodes (which are in the "Creates three random greyscale tilings" chunk of the annotated shader above) plugged directly into the User_Defined node that creates the tile colours (which is the middle node near the left edge of the annotated shader above).

So basically all the junk and spaghetti in between is just for those weights !