Working on some new wood appearances for use in Fusion 360

[PhilProcarioJr]

I'm going to post some images of some new materials that I would like some feedback on.

[SGoldthwaite]

Your wood appearances are very impressive.  I don't really like most of the wood appearances that come with Fusion.  I wish there was an easy way to get better ones.  

[PhilProcarioJr]

@SGoldthwaite

Thank you, I'm working on making them better all the time. With the holidays it has been tough finding time. Here is another variation of the material.

[PhilProcarioJr]

Here was a texture mapping test to make sure the wood materials would wrap a more complex object without obvious breaks in the texture. I would say this was pretty successful.

[TrippyLighting]

Yes, definitely successful!

[cekuhnen]

now of the material could simulate different veneer cuts like rift cut or so ...

[LMD001]

Hello PhilProcarioJr,

These are very nice indeed!

Best regards,

Ludo

[PhilProcarioJr]

@TrippyLighting & @LMD001

Thanks guys.

@cekuhnen

Could you give me some photo reference of what your talking about. I'm sure I can match it. Thanks.

Right now I have about 30 variations of maple, not really sure how many I will do but I kinda plan on around 50 or so.....

Really it all depends on time as I have already sunk about 100 hours in making these....

Cheers

Phil

[cekuhnen]

http://www.kregtool.com/files/newsletters/KregPlus/Images/july13/cutting-veneer-large.jpg

[PhilProcarioJr]

Oh ok I see what you mean, I have already created all those patterns. All I need to do to finish the veneer look is to create a plywood end material.

Plywood is also on my list to do as soon as all the Maple materials are done. I wish fusion had a way to save out created materials to make it easy to share with other people.

Oh well I guess thats one for the idea station......

[cekuhnen]

Now you made me curious.

How would one even do plywood in Fusion - it cannot bend and you would have to guide the texture along a bend direction!

[TrippyLighting]

Yes, that would interest me too. Bent laminates and in fact other bent wood are a challenge as Fusion lacks some control over UV mapping.

[cekuhnen]

Actually I never saw that working in any CAD app which is why I go poly for that.

[PhilProcarioJr]

 @cekuhnen

What do you mean by bend? Plywood is flat, it would just have a different texture on the ends as opposed to the face. Not being able to completely control UV mapping sucks but its like that with all parametric software...all I'm doing is some simple tricks to give the correct appearance...I dread saying it since people around here hate the phrase so much but its just a "work around" for the limitations of parametric software. I had a conference call with the people that are developing the renderer and the 3d wood materials and although what they are doing is revolutionary "because no other software does what they are doing" I think the main point is being missed. In the end all we need is materials that look real as opposed to being based on real world mathematics. All of my wood materials are procedural textures but since Fusion doesn't support Node based rendering and material creation with Perlin Noise, and Fractal generators and so on....I am forced to export variations of the procedural textures to 4k images that fill the slots for Diffuse, Normal and Bump Maps. Then using what materials and UV mapping types that do exist in Fusion along with rotation and scale I am able to make things look real....but its all just tricks to get the appearance I am looking for. Overall I think these are better then the default materials in Fusion. Of course this is just my opinion.

This is why I said I wish they exposed all parameters of the materials and was told they do here on the boards, but after talking to the actual people behind the materials I was told the reason "all" parameters are not exposed is because it would be too complicated for the average user. Although I completely agree with them it sucks for us power users as I want more control over my materials.

Cheers

Phil

[cekuhnen]

Hm I disagree - they could also have alight and advanced option.

I am also talking about bend plywood furniture where the texture has to move bend.

I actually use procedural recently as well to make myself the correct size of veneer cuts.

And then apply that into an image and texture the designs

Actually I have to correct myself Pixels 3D which was a NURBS app was able to have correct blends between surface patches.

You would select all the side patches - obviously modeled correctly and then add a material. I would say Fusion 360 simply does not add

that UV tool but so do many others for NURBS - which is odd becuase NURBS comes with perfect UV unlike mesh.

[PhilProcarioJr]

Well I disagreed with them also and they said they just needed to figure out how to incorporate it into the software as not to confuse new users. The part I agreed with them on was not confusing new users, not that it couldn't be done. I also told them to add buttons like "expert" or something like that and they did listen just not sure how they are going to add it or if they will add it. The people responsible for the renderer work on the renderers for all Autodesk software and they are not directly under the Fusion team (hopefully I got that right but anyway that's how I understood it), and told me that stuff like that was ultimately up to the Fusion team on what all is in the user interface for us. Even if they did decide to add stuff like what I want it would take quite some time to develop, I just hope it happens sooner or later. All of my tests with my textures has yielded great results being mapped on pretty complex objects with lots of bends and although its not completely accurate with real world it looks right so I'm happy.

[cekuhnen]

I dont know - why not keep procedural wood closed until the UI is better or the way it should.

But who knows.

[PhilProcarioJr]

I agree with you, giving us something that is only partially done is of little to no use to me. I would rather wait to see it when its fully functional rather then a watered down version that I can't actually use. I guess this opinion is subjective depending on who you are...and although the 3d wood solves the UV mapping problem it doesn't look real to me so I don't use it.

Again though this is only my opinion.

[TrippyLighting]

These proceduaral wood textures solve the UV mapping problem only for pieces of wood that are not bent. Admittedly that may cover most applications. However, bent laminating and steam bending wood are quite a common pratices.

Procedural textures could solve the problem of properly rendering end grain.

While the end grain problem is wood specific, to properly render woven surfaces such as carbon fiber and other textiles, more UV mapping control is needed. That does not necessarily need to come from within Fusion. While this suggestion is limited to T-Splies, I believe the .obj format can also contain a UV maping. We can already export T-Spline control cages as .obj. that could be used to create a UV map in an external application and then re-import that .obj back into Fusion, this time with the UV map.

[PhilProcarioJr]

@TrippyLighting

"These proceduaral wood textures solve the UV mapping problem only for pieces of wood that are not bent. Admittedly that may cover most applications. However, bent laminating and steam bending wood are quite a common pratices."

I agree, and in reality once they finish up sheet metal tools it would be fairly easy to use the same concepts on the materials to calculate the bend of a material. Will they add it who knows. I guess thats another one for the idea station....

Like I said what I am doing is only tricks so it wouldn't work for bent wood, a custom texture added to a material would need to be created for that. (I don't think that it is a good solution as it would take to long to get right, not saying you couldn't just would take to long.)

Well if they ever do impliment that feature (importing obj files with the UV mapping intact I hope they also allow us to export obj files that are not triangulated) because it's a PITA to UV map triangulated meshes. For the life of me I don't understand why they can't have an option to not triangulate the mesh on export. Sure if your just going to rapid prototype a model thats fine but if you want to actually work with the exported mesh in another app it makes it very painful to deal with.

[light24bulbs]

These textures are amazing.  Do you think I could have them?  Are you selling them?