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.
