CTBFproc

Cellular Texture Basis Functions

LW6 Procedural Texture Plugin

Downloading CTBFproc

Using CTBFproc


Summary: This is a procedural texture plugin for Lightwave3D version 6. It allows the user to experiment with an implementation of Steve Worley's SIGGRAPH 96 paper titled "A Cellular Texture Basis Function". (NOTE: The previous link is a password protected link to ACM's online library, so you need an ACM online library membership to gain access). But here is a very informative online presentation about the paper made available by Michael Monks.

CTBFproc requires version 6.5 of Lightwave 3D.



Downloading CTBFproc

The CTBFproc plugin is currently available only for the Intel and Mac platforms.

You should now find a "CTBFproc" entry in all the locations you find LW6 built-in procedural textures.



Using CTBFproc

The majority of the documentation for this plugin will be found on the CTBFtoy shader page. But here are a few short comments about the parameters that might help you get started without getting too frustrated with the not-so-friendly interface.


Feature Point Density - This is an integer slider that ranges from 1 to 9. (The slider probably needs a numeric display).

Feature Point Shading - This control will not have any effect on the bump channel. But definitely try it when using displacement mapping, it can give interesting results there.

Basis Function - See the CTBFtoy page, the F1 through F4 and Custom Function parameters are described there. The C1 through C5 controls (although they are not labelled that way) appear directly below this menu. The C1 through C4 controls will only be available when "Custom" is chosen for the Basis Function.

C5 (labelled as just "+") - This control is special, as it is always available. It exists to assist the user in moving the texture's values into the 0...1 range. You will want to use this parameter quite often to find the best possible values for the texture (especially with the Turbulence and RidgedMultifractal types, as these misbehave the most and stray farthest from the 0...1 optimum range).

For instance, if I use CTBFproc in the Color channel and choose red as the Texture Color. Choose F1 from the Basis Function menu, and then choose Turbulence from the Fractal Type menu. The entire surface will be red (too much texture), so by setting C5 to approximately -4.0, the intense texturing is decreased into the desired range. Just remember, too much texture color, lower the value of C5. Too much surface color, raise the value of C5.

Fractal Type - Same parameters as found in the LW6 RAPTS.p procedurals, only these use the Cellular Basis function rather than the traditional Noise functions.


Others using CTBFproc

And finally, I don't possess the ability to read Japanese but I discovered this web page that deals with CTBFproc (sorry, I don't know the name of the author of the web page). It has a few interesting surface textures at the bottom of the page that I believe were created with the plugin, and a second page that attempts to show the visual differences between the various Fractal Types available in the plugin.

If any other users have online web pages or images using CTBFproc that you would like to share with me and the rest of the Lightwave world, please send me the link. I would be very pleased to put links to your work in this section of the page.