May 16 2009
Shaders for mental ray and RenderMan
Reptile was born out of the minShaders library and includes shaders that deal with procedurally generating variation and diversification.
In many shots an artist needs to create countless variations of a single shader so that every object looks slightly different from the others. The Reptile shaders spare you the hassle of manually creating the ever so slight variations by procedurally generating any number of permutations of the object’s attributes and by randomizing texture attributes.
ReptileTextures
ReptileTextures randomly applies textures and materials to any number of objects or instances.
ReptileBlocks
ReptileBlocks procedurally generates tiled textures with automatic variation for individual tiles as well as distinct objects.
ReptileScatter
ReptileScatter generates variation in textures by randomly translating, rotating, scaling, layering and skipping UV coordinates.
ReptileVariation
The ReptileVariation shader can be used to randomize attributes such as color, hue, saturation, brightness and tint of any other material or object.
July 18 2009
ReptileTextures
ReptileTextures randomly applies textures and materials to objects.
Whereas ReptileVariation creates variety and randomness in a scene by changing values such as hue, saturation and lightness of objects, ReptileTextures lets you automatically apply different textures, shaders and materials to any number of objects or instances.
This shader will prove incredibly useful whenever you are dealing with more than a couple of objects that require a broad range of variation in look, but setting up an individual shader for each and every object would be tedious or even impossible.
Usage scenarios include plants and leafs, messy bookshelves, landscapes, cars on a highway, characters’ clothing, buildings and more.
Usage
Apply the same instance of ReptileTexures to all your objects and plug your textures or shaders into the appropriate slots in ReptileTextures… you’re done!
May 16 2009
ReptileBlocks
ReptileBlocks procedurally generates tiled textures with automatic variation for individual tiles as well as distinct objects.
Its main purpose is to generate procedural buildings but it could be used for various other effects due to its agnostic design.
As the shading is accomplished procedurally, no unsightly tiling or repetition will be visible whatsoever.
Usage
If you’ve ever rendered a large city in 3D you’ll know how much work it can be to manually build the myriad different buildings and facades needed to instill the illusion of a naturally evolved urban area.
ReptileBlocks facilitates this task by removing the need to come up with all the variations on your own: Feed it a handful of window textures and the shader will procedurally generate cities of any size with diverse buildings and even street lights and illuminated advertising.
The shader is particularly well suited for night scenes where much detail can be omitted and we can trick the viewer into believing there’s more to the scene than meets the eye.
May 11 2009
ReptileScatter
ReptileScatter is a 2D texture placement node that generates variation by randomly translating, rotating, scaling, layering and skipping UV coordinates.
This shader is extremely useful whenever you need to quickly apply texture in a randomly scattered fashion, like autumn leaves on the ground, rocks and pebbles in a landscape scenery or beat-up areas on an otherwise impeccable surface.
Usage
Using ReptileScatter is very simple: Hook the node up to a texture and you’re good to go! You can set how many times the texture should be scattered across the surface area, whether it should be rotated or scaled and whether you’d like to use an alpha channel for a stencil-like effect.
ReptileScatter works particularly well in combination with minLayers for extra effect.
April 25 2009
ReptileVariation
The ReptileVariation shader can be used to randomize attributes such as color, hue, saturation, brightness and tint of any other material or object.
ReptileVariation randomizes specified attributes on a per object basis. This is very useful to introduce randomness and variation into a scene without creating hundreds of distinct shaders for each and every small variation.
Usage
Grassy fields, messy bookshelves or rocky landscapes can easily be improved with a little added diversity and randomness from this shader.
