Textures

Textures

Materials get their character from textures: the image on a picture material, the bump that makes a hammered finish read as hammered, the noise that breaks up a too-perfect surface. The Textures panel lists every texture in the document and is where you create and edit them directly — rather than digging for them inside each material.

Add texture creates a new one, Import from file loads a saved .rtex, and Choose existing duplicates one already in the document. The search box filters by name, notes or tags.

The texture families

• Image-based — a bitmap does the work: Bitmap and Simple Bitmap for image maps, High Dynamic Range for HDRIs, and a set of ready-made bump images — Crosshatch, Grit, Hatch, Leather Grain, Simple Dot, Speckle — that are the fastest route to a believable brushed or blasted finish.
• 2D procedural — generated patterns on the surface: Checker, Dots, Grid, Waves, Mask, Gradient and friends.
• 3D procedural — generated in space, so they cut through the object with no seams: Noise, Granite, Marble, Perlin Marble, Wood, Stucco, Turbulence, plus utility nodes like Blend, Addition, Multiplication to combine them.
• Utility — Physical Sky, the Projection Changer, and More types… in the content type browser.

The full reference for every texture type is in the Rhino help.