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What kind of textures do procedural materials use?
Procedural Materials can work with any combination of procedurally generated textures and stored bitmaps. Additionally, included bitmap images can be filtered and modified before use. Unlike a standard Material, a Procedural Material can use vector images in the form of SVG files which allows for resolution-independent textures.
What does procedural texture mean in computer graphics?
In computer graphics, a procedural texture is a texture created using a mathematical description (i.e. an algorithm) rather than directly stored data. The advantage of this approach is low storage cost, unlimited texture resolution and easy texture mapping.
How are procedural materials used in the editor?
Procedural Materials can also be used purely as a convenience in the editor (ie, you can generate a standard Material by setting the parameters of a Procedural Material and then “baking” it). This will remove the runtime overhead of material generation but naturally, the baked materials can’t be changed or animated during gameplay.
Where can I find a procedural texture generator?
Procedural textures can be found in some 3D software by default, and in specifically made texturing software too. Substance Painter is a good example of software that has several types of procedural generators in it to make unique textures easily.
Why do procedural materials need to be updated?
Procedural Materials support a form of caching whereby the material is only updated if its parameters have changed since it was last generated. Further to this, some materials may have many properties that could theoretically be changed and yet only a few will ever need to change at runtime.
What can procedural materials be used for in Unity?
Procedural Materials can also incorporate complex texture animation. For example, you could animate the hands of the clock or cockroaches running across a floor. Procedural Materials can work with any combination of procedurally generated textures and stored bitmaps. Additionally, included bitmap images can be filtered and modified before use.
Which is better procedural materials or bitmap images?
Procedural Materials inherently tend to use less storage than bitmap images. However, the trade-off is that they are based around scripts and running those scripts to generate materials requires some CPU and GPU resources. The more complex your Procedural Materials are, the greater their runtime overhead.