Hey everyone, I work in the furniture industry and use procedural wood all of the time. I was recently looking at a chair IRL and wondered how I could achieve the look of figured grain. Figured grain can be extreme with quilted and flamed maple and burled walnut, the list goes on. In our furniture it is often a natural occurrence and we do not seek out specific wood stock for figured grain. Most of the time it is subtle. Anyway, thought I'd share what I came up with. Pretty simple addition to normal procedural wood work flow!
Here I am adding a brushed texture to the procedural wood diffuse with a Multiply blend. The brushed texture is masked with a Noise (Fractal) to add variation to where the figuring is. You can also use Soft Light blend to go lighter rather than darker. I imagine you could use other textures in place of the brushed texture to get different figuring.
Note that actual figured wood can have a 3D effect similar to the appearance of carbon fiber. I attempted this with a bump map and a label (same as a carbon fiber material work flow) with some success but render times are way up and unless it is a detailed animation, you would never see it.
that is really neat !
I like that a lot!
nice approach!
thumbs up!
cheers
designgestalt
as a wood turner (pens mostly) I seek out those figured bits and cutoffs. Very nice look for those, very subtle but man, it really adds to the realism.
Thanks for sharing this. I'll take it into my workflow.