i was wondering if this was possible in a procedural texture:
ok a procedural texture that can create tech tectures like this:
maybe even like this:
is it even possible???
it is possible, but you have to model the bumps, then texture them using procedurals, then render orthogonally, from above with a sun lamp positioned directly behind the camera. I actually did this once following a tutorial by <i forgot his name 
>.
hrm not what i really meant. is it possible to be able to program a procedural plugin texture that can make textures like that?
don’t think so
No it’s not. Procedurals are made up by mathematical algoritms. You can make structured or unstructured patterns, but not a photorealistic texture.
No matter what you do, a procedural shader will always look like a procedural shader. If you catch my drift… There’s no way to get a natural looking result (unless you’re modeling an egg or something).
Just look at so called ‘noise’, as in perlin noise which is supposed to be the most excellent algorithm for turbulence and fractality, or that friggin clouds filter in photoshop (perlin too I guess). Nobody seriously considers that to look natural in any way.
So, as stated above by Eric - no, no, no.
I’ve seen photorealistic pictures using only procedurals (not eggs). I also think that you can achieve results like the above pics with procedurals if you combine a different procedural texture. (like one for the basic bumps, 2 or 3 for the rust, etc…)
yeah, you can combine them like that, but you won’t have anything regular, like the examples you posted. The definition of “procedural textures” is that they’re completely random! what you posted is a modelled texture (i think) on top of which the procedural textures for rust, etc were applied
Correct me if I’m wrong, but can’t those bumps be described mathematically? I’ts just like describing an ellipse that repeats all the time no?
About the randomness : I’ve seen that brick plugin. Those bricks aren’t random.
hannibar: sure, maybe one could describe such bumps mathematically, but there would still be an annoying feel of ‘faked irregularity’ to the result. It would look procedural anyway. 'nuff said.
I would have to mildy (but really very mildly, I don’t know what I’m talking about after all) have to disagree a bit…
I think if you know the strengths and weaknesses of the procedural texture you can produce some quite nice results.
There are some good renderman shaders outthere. But it is true that images capture a lot of things that are quite hard to do using procedurals only, maybe the best option would be in resynthesizing new textures procedurally from image textures.
Now that’s quite an idea, though! A procedural algorithm that picks up image data from an internal bank of natural images combined in different ways. That would mean using the best features from two different worlds.
heh, what is that last example picture supposed to be? 
.b
could there be several procedural textures stacked together like layers?