Texturing Material Functions

Texturing functions provide for specialized handling of texture-based actions, such as adjusting UVs of a texture, cropping textures, and many others. The following is the list of Texturing Functions.

CylindricalUVs

This function tiles a texture around an object using cylindrically projected UVs centered around the object's center.

DetailTexturing

The DetailTexturing function simplifies the process of creating detail textures for your material. Detail texturing allows you to give the illusion of more detail in a texture by bringing in a more highly repeated diffuse and normal map combination which layers over the original diffuse and normal for an object. This gives the illusion of greater detail at close range.

LocalAlignedTexture

The LocalAlignedTexture function tiles a texture on an object in local space.

Although this function has an input for a normal, at this time the input is nonfunctional.

ZWorldSpaceFlow

The ZWorldSpaceFlow function pushes a texture along the tangent space of an object, causing that texture to look like it is "flowing" along that surface. It works by making two variations of the texture panning in the same direction, but each with a slight offset from the other. It then blends each one over the other in a repeating fashion.

TextureCropping

The TextureCropping function allows you to crop down a given texture to a smaller and offset location on the texture coordinate plane. This is perfect for placing a block of color on top of an emissive texture region.

This function does not actually perform a true cropping operation such as one might be used to in image editing packages such as Photoshop. Rather, it remaps the existing texture to new coordinates in UV texture space, which is a lot more like scaling than cropping. However, the function is still highly useful for generating masks and adding color to texture regions.

WorldAlignedNormal

WorldAlignedNormal takes in a normal map and aligns its texture to the world, rather than locally to the object. It also allows for scaling in world units, rather than as a percentage of the texture size.

Because this function tiles the texture in world space, it is important to note that any animated objects textured in this manner will experience texture "swimming," in which the texture remains in place while the object slides underneath it.

Notice the texture is still aligned to world coordinates, even though the floor is rotated.

WorldAlignedTexture

The WorldAlignedTexture function serves as a way to tile a texture across the surface of an object in world space, independently of that object's size or rotation. This function allows you to specify the direction in which the texture will be projected, and offers scaling in world units rather than as a percentage of the texture size.

Because this function tiles the texture in world space, it is important to note that any animated objects textured in this manner will experience texture "swimming," in which the texture remains in place while the object slides underneath it.

Notice the texture remains aligned to world coordinates, even when the plane is rotated.

3DSandMayaUVCoordinates

This function flips the green channel of incoming UVs to place the 0,0 coordinate in the lower-left corner (as it is in 3ds Max and Maya) instead of the upper-left. This is important for models coming in from these applications, as it prevents you from having to flip textures.

• UVChannel0 - V-flipped UVs from UV channel 0.

• UVChannel0 - V-flipped UVs from UV channel 1.

• UVChannel0 - V-flipped UVs from UV channel 2.

• UVChannel0 - V-flipped UVs from UV channel 3.

CustomRotator

The CustomRotator function allows you to rotate a texture. However, it stands apart from the basic Rotator expression node in that it exposes a center point around which the image rotates. It also changes the rotation system to be 0-1 based, so that a value of 1 is considered a complete rotation, or 360 degrees. On a standard Rotator, a complete rotation requires a Time input of approximately 25.1.

Note in the video how the center of rotation changes when the Rotation Center values are changed in the Material Graph.

HeightLerp

The HeightLerp function allows you perform a linear interpolation between 2 textures based on a heightmap and a transition phase value. This allows you to adjust the value along the hightmap that the lerp takes place.

CameraWorldBlend

Outputs falloff results for the 3 primary world vectors based on the camera angle. Can be used to blend between textures based on direction the camera is looking.

This function appears to still be in development and may not give expected results.

Notice that the green texture blends in wherever the surface aligns to the XY plane, with red everywhere else.

LocalSpaceSurfaceMirroring

The LocalSpaceSurfaceMirroring function applies mirroring to all faces of a surface that are oriented toward a given local axis. Other areas on the surface area masked out. These masks can be offset via a scalar input, and the entire calculation can be perturbed by a normal map. This is useful when you need to produce mirroring based on a surface's topology.

SubUV_Function

SubUV_Function is perfect for handling animation across a sprite sheet or texture with multiple frames. The function takes in a texture object, and based on the outputs can show a blended-frame animation of the frames on that texture.

TwoSidedTexturing

The TwoSidedTexturing function provides individual texture inputs for both sides of a two-sided material. This function does nothing if the material's Two Sided property is not active.

A different texture is applied to each side of the plane.

WorldCoordinate3Way

The WorldCoordinate3Way function projects a texture onto the surface of an object in world coordinates. The user has control over how multiple textures blend together at the edges, and a normal map can be added to perturb the surface prior to the calculation.

Because these textures are projected along world coordinates, any motion or rotation of the given object will cause the textures to "swim" along the surface.