Procedural textures

Interesting article.
They claim to be able to eliminate 90% of the classic textures by procedural ones, what makes it much easier to distribute online because of the reduced filesize. And it still looks great.

http://www.bit-tech.net/gaming/2006/11/09/Procedural_Textures_Future_Gam/1.html

 

Yep...now i won't dig out when i've talked about this... :O)

 

There are 2 issues with procedural textures:
1) they're slow. Even if they're only generated once per level, if you have a lot of them, that will make for a significant wait time at the begininning of the level.
2) they're harder to create than simply snapping a picture of a wall.

Don't get me wrong, I do love procedural textures, and I use them all the time in 3dsmax. Just playing devil's advocate

 

Yes, sure calculation can take some time but if they're hard to make depends on the underlying system. There is picturematerial where it's easier to post product a photo, draw your own one or use a snippet with something like imageSynth for instance but there also is picture material which you won't find this easily.

I like them. They are not good for everything but you can do some very nice stuff with them.