Procedural Texturing in Maya and V-Ray

In this lesson, we're going to create the Bump map for the nucleus using multiple procedural shaders. Let's open up the Hypershade and start working on the Bump shader. Again, move your mouse over the work area and press Space. This way, the Hypershade will fill the entire viewport. Now let's open the nucleus base that we created in the previous lesson. Select the nucleus base. Now click on the small icon that has two arrows. This will show the input and output connections that are linked into the shader. For the Bump shader, I'm going to be using another procedural texture, but this time I'm going to be using a 3-D texture. And for this one, I'm going to be using wood. Wood is a really good shader when trying to create an organic-looking Bump map or even a diffuse map, a diffuse shader. I'm going to start by renaming this nucleus bump. Double-click on it so we can open the attribute editor. And let's start doing some tweaks to this so we can get the look that we're going for. First, I'm going to start tweaking the filler and the [? vein ?] color. For the filler color, I'm going to go with the lighter gray, and for the [? vein ?] color I'm going with the darker gray, just so we can get more bump-friendly colors for the Bump shader. Just so we can see the tweaks that we're doing clear, just select the nucleus bump and press F. This way it will focus on the shader and it will be far much easier for us to see the tweaks that we're doing. The second thing I'm going to tweak is the age. You're going to notice when we start adding some more age to this, shader, we'll see that it's going to be adding a lot of more ripples to it. I think something around eight is a good number. For the grain color, I'm not going to be needing any grain for this particular Bump shader, but for now for this example, I'm just going to keep them on so you can see the result that we're going to get with the grain and without the grain. Now what I want from this shader is, I really don't want this perfect circles, ripples, happening because nothing in nature is this perfect. So I really want to break these apart. So the easiest way to do that is just add some noise attribute. So open up the noise attribute, scroll down a bit, and in the amplitude X and Y, I'm just going to add one. Go ahead and play around with the ratio just so you get the effect that you're looking for. And I'm going to add some ripples in the X, Y, and Z. In the X I'm going to add two, in the Y I'm going to add five, and in the Z I'm going to add two. Please feel free to add any numbers you like. I'm using these numbers just because I know the result that I'm going to get. Check this out. If you add 10 ripples in the X, this will add-- repeat 10 times the ripples on the X. In the Y, the same. You're going to add more ripples on the Y and so on. But for this example, I'm going to use two, five, and two. Once you're happy with the result, you're going to go ahead and link the nucleus bump with the nucleus shader that we just created, the nucleus Bump shader that we created into the nucleus Bump slot. So select the nucleus base color, scroll down until we get into the Bump and normal mapping. Middle-click and drag the nucleus bump over the map. This will add some Bump effect to the nucleus base color. So let's go ahead into the perspective and zoom in a bit. And let's do a test render. See how that looks. And this is the result that we get. And this was why I was saying that I don't want any grain into the wood shader because we are going to get a really, really grainy bump map. And I really don't want that. I just want some nice lines effect and a bit of texture to it, just what that wood has to offer. So I'm going to keep this for comparison, and we're going to head over into Hypershade. We'll start tweaking this. We just just go into the nucleus bump and just under grain contrast, put that to zero. And grain spacing, have that zero as well. This will remove the grain from the shader. So if we do a test render now, this is the result that we get. And this is more what I'm looking for. I want this to have some type of grain on it, some type of crisp texture. I'm looking for this nice edges on it that the wood shader has to offer. And you see the difference-- this one, we don't see any detail that we added on the diffuse map, and I really don't want that. Although this is starting to look interesting, I really want to add more layers to this and make it look more organic. So to do that, I'm going to be adding two more procedure shaders into the nucleus bump. For this first one, I'm going to be using a ramp, which we're gonna add into the [? vein ?] color. So let's go into 2-D textures, select Ramp. Again, rename the ramp vine color. I'm naming it vine color just because we are going to drop this into the vine color. Select the vine color, press F, big focus on it. For this one, I'm going to be using, again, dark gray, light gray colors. Before we start adding the color, just make sure the interpolation is set to none. Just in the previous lesson, we just want some hard looking vines over the surface of the nucleus. So for the first color, I'm going to go with the darker gray. And for the second one, I'm going to go with the light gray. Again, feel free to choose any type of colors you think fits your project. If you want the Bump map to be more higher and more sharper, you make these white. But I'm going for much more of a soft look to it, so a light gray will do just fine for the look that I'm going for. But again, feel free to create any type of-- play around with these settings to get the look that you're going for. Just play around with the positions of these. I'm just using these because I'm looking for a particular result. Now for this one, I'm going to be using a V-ramp, and I want to add some waving to it. Remember, when we did that for the vines color and diffuse color, for this one, we used the U-ramp. For this one, I'm going to be using a V-ramp. So when tweaking the waves, make sure you tweak the V-wave, so we add some nice waviness to this. Again, I want to break these up. The easiest way to do that is to add some noise. Just get the noise frequency lower, just because I don't want the noise to be that frequent on the sample. You can see it here. If we raise this, you're going to see it repeat itself. So just keep the noise around two, noise frequency around for, something like that. Again, feel free to play around with these to get the look that you're going for. Once you're happy with this, let's go ahead and drop this into the nucleus bump. Select the nucleus bump, middle-click and drag the vine color into the vine color. Click on the nucleus bump, press F, and you can barely see these under the wood. If I go ahead and just tweak this a bit, just to add some vine spread just to make the vines more bigger and more visible, you can see the vines underneath the wood, which adds a nice layer to it. So we have a more complex shape now. Now if we do a test render now-- let me select and go to Perspective, and we do a test render now, going to keep this. This is the look that we get. These are the small vines that we added just now. So on top of this, I want to have some spherical splotches on top of the surface. And for that, I'm going to be using another procedural shader. For this example, I'm going to be using a 3-D texture, a leather. Again, go ahead and rename this. Hold control and double-click on the name, and name this Filler Color. I'm naming this Filler Color because this is going to be inside the filler color. Close the attribute editor. Now double-click on the filler color, and let's start tweaking this so we get the look that we're going for. Again, for the cell color, I'm going to go with a white color and for the crease color, I'm going to go with a darker gray. Again, feel free to play around with these settings. For the cell size, I'm going to go with a big cell size, just so I don't get a lot of splotches on the surface of this. So I'm going to go with three. I'm going to keep it to one now, just so you can see the effect. Press F so we can focus on this. The spottiness, I'm going to add some spottiness to it. The spottiness will make these creases or these cells more spherical and add some randomness to it. I'm going to tweak down this threshold just to get a nice fall off between the white and the gray. So we get a nice fall off between the two because if you raise this, you're going to see, you get a really harsh white, then we go to gray, and then we're going to get a flat surface then. We're going to see a bump and I really don't want that. I just want a nice soft look to this. Now if you do a test render-- I forgot to link this to the nucleus bump. Now select the nucleus bump, middle-click and drag the filler color, and drop it into the filler color. Let's do now a test render, and this is the result that we get. And I'm not looking for this. I just want-- this is what I was saying I wanted to get, like three spheres, only a couple of big splotches on it. The other thing I really don't like about this is you can see these creases, which are really useful when you're doing a leather shader. But for this example, I'm not going for a leather shader. I just want some splotches. And it's a really easy fix. I just head back to the filler color, the leather shader, and where you have creases, just uncheck crease. This is what will happen. It will make these stand on their own and have spherical spots with a nice fall off between gray and white. But if we add creases, it will add these edges between them. So this is the look that I'm going for. Now make the cell size three. I'm going to save this for comparison. Do another render. And this is the look that I'm going for. So you can see, we do have a couple of splotches on this one. And maybe if we rotate the camera a bit and maybe do a render from-- see, we're going to get some nice-- gives us a nice effect. We see that we have a really layered-- we can see there is something inside of this nucleus and we have some nice effects on it. Again, feel free to play around with these to get the look that you're going for. In the next lesson, we will be using a V-ray blend material to add some nice effects to the nucleus. And then we can start working on the cell membrane.