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Maya 2022 - Layered Shaders and Displacements, Tiling Textures, and Terrain Blending Tutorial — Transcript

by Matthew Rotella · 4,166 words · 909 segments · language en · Watch on YouTube

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0:00hello professor matthew rotella here and
0:02in this tutorial i'm going to be going
0:04over tiling textures uh for building
0:07terrain but also and within the context
0:10of
0:12building a layered shader and
0:14using different amounts of tiling with
0:16with different shaders so
0:19what i got going on here
0:20is i got three different material
0:23swatches that i can use to basically
0:25build up layers on my terrain i
0:29each is a tiling texture these are just
0:30three textures i
0:32grabbed off of poly haven uh
0:35so they're they're out there
0:37and uh i got this this bedrock this like
0:40cracked rock texture i'm gonna use as my
0:42base i have this mud i'm gonna have go
0:45over top of it and then i got this uh
0:48this like grass leaves and sticks that
0:51is just gonna get scattered uh kind of
0:54around over top of everything
0:57so uh
0:59and at the moment i i have all the
1:02shaders built uh they're rendering like
1:04this it's a complete set of maps that i
1:06download from the website you know
1:07complete with the displacement so we got
1:09the displacements hooked up
1:11and
1:12yeah
1:14so
1:16first of all i guess like before we dive
1:18into
1:19uh layer textures let's just go over
1:22tiling
1:23i'd i'd say most people that use the
1:26program here i'll do it with this one
1:28first because
1:30um
1:31most people who use the program
1:33are well aware
1:35that you can get your your uvs and you
1:38can
1:38just scale them and it will
1:41make the the texture tile
1:44and
1:45while this is true this is not really
1:48the best way to work
1:49ideally instead of tiling textures
1:52by scaling your uvs which you know it
1:55that limits a lot of your model's
1:57utility uh you know
2:00no matter what it is you know
2:02you're likely working with something
2:03that isn't just
2:05you know a square
2:06uh but yeah no matter what it is uh
2:10tiling textures by scaling your uvs you
2:12lose a lot of utility by like exiting
2:14the zero to one uv space and uh
2:17and working this way so let's let's get
2:19this back to
2:21back the way it was and then also
2:23i mean
2:25you can see that when you tile something
2:27you can start to see and recognize the
2:29pattern pretty easily
2:31once it tiles to a certain degree so
2:34that can kind of limit how you use a
2:37texture even if it is tiling and if
2:39you're talking about something that's a
2:40large piece of terrain
2:42uh without tiling it getting the
2:45resolution you need to not just be
2:47looking at pixel soup
2:49can be difficult but then that's where
2:51building a layered shader where you can
2:53have different rates of tiling broken up
2:56by some sort of random element
2:59it can
3:00really
3:03allow you to build a shader that tiles
3:06that you can get the resolution out of
3:08rather easily
3:10uh all right but yeah how do we how do
3:12we go about doing this
3:13so
3:15um like i said these shaders are already
3:17built in my case and of course we're
3:19going to be throwing them onto this
3:21ground plane
3:23renders might be a little noisier than
3:24usual i have my settings turned down so
3:26that i can render
3:28quickly for the tutorial
3:31but anyway
3:33you're probably asking well if i don't
3:34scale my uvs and how am i meant to tile
3:37things
3:38well
3:40if you've been building shaders in maya
3:44whether you're new or old with the
3:47program i'm sure you've noticed that you
3:49have nodes that pop up in your graph
3:52editor i'll usually call it the node
3:54editor even though i think it's
3:56more
3:57within the context of the hypershade
3:59it's called the graph editor but that's
4:00confusing since it can be confused with
4:02other editors so i'll call it the node
4:04editor although there's also whatever
4:07i'm getting
4:08um
4:09here within the hypershades node editor
4:14we
4:14[Music]
4:16whenever you place a file or basically
4:19any 2d texture you get this place 2d
4:22texture node
4:23that pops up on
4:25on the file and you'll see that you have
4:29repeat uvs
4:31built into here
4:32so for example you know if i want to
4:34have
4:36my rock bed
4:37tile
4:38two times
4:40then
4:41i can
4:44repeat
4:46and
4:47which i in this case i'm even i'm going
4:49to be stretching my texture now but
4:52i can have it repeat one way and then
4:55you know come back in
4:57repeat the other
4:58and now i have it tiling and you know i
5:01can push this
5:03as far as i want to get as many on here
5:06as i need
5:08so yeah that's all well and good
5:11but
5:12now how do we build
5:14our layered shader almost every
5:17rendering engine worth its salt has some
5:19sort of layered shader i'm going to be
5:21working in redshift in this tutorial
5:24but arnold works basically the exact
5:27same way
5:29so
5:30i have redship materials and then
5:33there's this
5:37redshift material blender right
5:39underneath it
5:40which you'll see for each part of the
5:42blender
5:43it has
5:45a
5:46material that you can plug in
5:48and
5:49then
5:50a blend color that
5:54will be on the layer above it that
5:56determines how much of that layers shows
5:59through
6:00so
6:01just as a quick test
6:03to show you
6:05how this works before we start using our
6:07terrain
6:11what we can do
6:15is
6:16let's just let's put a couple simple
6:18colors on here
6:19so and if you're working in something
6:22like arnold like i said arnold has the
6:24same thing
6:26there's the
6:29uh
6:30the ai mix shader which only has two
6:33layers but it has more utilities to work
6:36with in terms of blending them then
6:38there's the layer shader which i think
6:39has eight
6:41that you can blend between
6:43now redshift has another blender that's
6:46that we'll get into later
6:48that's specifically for displacements
6:51it's the
6:53rs displacement blender
6:57but
6:58arnold doesn't explicitly have that a
7:00lot of times when blending displacements
7:02in
7:03arnold
7:04if i do that i'll actually
7:06use a maya has a layered texture
7:10utility and i'll even use that to build
7:12layer displacements
7:14regardless um
7:16yeah
7:17let's let's build a material here so
7:19let's just drop in i'm gonna delete
7:21these in a second
7:23so i'm not gonna bother naming them or
7:25anything let's just make one blue
7:28and we'll make another one
7:32like
7:33orange
7:34okay
7:35and we'll plug
7:37blue into the base
7:40and we'll plug
7:45orange into our layer one
7:48that's my material blender too
7:52i'll
7:53grab
7:54that
7:56and i'll apply this to it now blue is
7:58our base
8:00and you know if i
8:02start rendering
8:05you can see that i'm getting
8:07a mighty fine
8:09aggressive blue there so how's this
8:12working
8:13well my orange isn't showing up
8:15because well
8:17i don't have my blend color
8:19coming up on top of it and you can see
8:21how it adaptively changes there so now
8:23if i render it's going to be all orange
8:26because white will allow whatever layer
8:29is on top of it to show through
8:32and of course
8:34we can
8:36apply
8:39whatever we
8:41want
8:42to
8:43uh
8:44to this blend color we can plug in any
8:46sort of map
8:47so like for example i could even just
8:50get
8:51a
8:52ramp
8:53and i don't even just leave it as this
8:56and then even with the the ramp
8:58i could just repeat it in v
9:01and like
9:03five times
9:05and then that'll more or less give me
9:07stripes
9:08and
9:09i can
9:12go ahead
9:13and
9:17render and this will probably give us a
9:19pretty wild looking
9:21thing
9:22so
9:25yeah the nifty stuff where the where the
9:27ramp is white and that's where my orange
9:30shows through where the ramp is it's
9:32darkest that's where the blue shows
9:33through pretty straightforward so
9:36let's start using this to build our
9:39terrain
9:41so
9:44yeah
9:46let's go ahead
9:49and just
9:55uh
9:57yeah
9:58let's just get rid of all this
10:01okay
10:02and let's start building things out like
10:05i said uh
10:06i want to have my rock bed
10:09as my base
10:11so i'll plug that into my base color
10:16and then i want the mud on top of that
10:20so that's going to be my layer one
10:24and
10:25then i want
10:28my grass
10:29on top of that
10:31so that's going to be
10:34my layer 2.
10:36all right
10:38so let's let's start adding things on
10:40one at a time well first of all we'll
10:43decide how much
10:45we want our
10:46rock to appear
10:47which our other layers are all
10:50totally
10:52done
10:52like they're totally flat
10:55or totally black so they're not going to
10:57show through at all
10:58all that's going to show through is the
11:00rock let's get
11:02let's get an angle at this so we can see
11:06how much it's coming through
11:10yeah so the whole thing is just our one
11:12rock tile and
11:14honestly this doesn't look too bad
11:18as just itself
11:21some of these details might look a
11:23little too
11:24large for what we're dealing with here
11:27but yeah overall
11:29not bad at all
11:32but still if you were to get close to
11:34this
11:35you would start to lose your resolution
11:37more and more so let's let's tile this a
11:40few times
11:42now where this is going to get
11:45a little tedious well we'll just do the
11:48color to start
11:49uh
11:51perfect that's my grass
11:53let's
11:54lay this out did that reorder things for
11:57me the way i want no okay
11:59whatever
12:00uh
12:04but
12:06we'll repeat the uv
12:08a couple times let's see
12:11if that gives us something
12:17no maybe let's go two more times so
12:19we'll have four total tiles on here
12:27yeah
12:28okay let's let's have
12:30four to four total tiles
12:32of uh of our rock here
12:38and
12:39i feel like that's kind of having it
12:41show up at a rate that works pretty well
12:44and we could push this even further
12:46because we still can't
12:48quite see
12:50that it's tiling yet i mean if you look
12:52really close you might be able to notice
12:54but
12:55overall uh not too bad
12:58and i can see that my uh
13:00my normals are showing through a little
13:02stronger which actually
13:04i should probably up my normals in
13:07general
13:08um
13:13because
13:15by default they're
13:17rather subtle with redshift and this
13:19might be pushing them
13:22too far
13:23but
13:31let's see what we get
13:35so yeah i
13:36might end up over compensating a little
13:38bit but
13:43ultimately
13:46looking good all right
13:48so
13:51uh
13:54yeah let's keep chugging along here so
13:56let's let's start building out our
13:57layers so we want to have our mud going
14:01over top which also our normals right
14:03now
14:04that you might have noticed that they
14:05don't match our tile
14:07that's because i would need to go
14:09through
14:10and just change all of these two to four
14:13usually i don't
14:14go and change every map until i'm
14:16satisfied where with where my colors are
14:21so
14:22but i mean it doesn't take long to go
14:25through and change them all
14:33and
14:36oh goodness drop my displacement all the
14:38way down here
14:45anyway
14:47whatever we'll we'll get there with the
14:49with the whole displacement business but
14:51yeah now
14:52that i've done that
14:54all of my
14:55tiling will match up
15:08and see the working through the place 2d
15:10texture node it can be really essential
15:14because
15:15well if you don't then like all of your
15:17things have to tile a base amount by
15:20default and you might not want all of
15:21your textures to tile period
15:26it's like besides you know like i said
15:27other
15:28uh sorts of of things that kind of
15:32uh like other sorts of utilities that
15:33you lose uh by not having your uvs
15:37conform to
15:38you know better guidelines
15:43in any case yeah let's start layering
15:45our mud over top which uh
15:48there's all sorts of noise that are
15:50available within maya
15:52uh
15:55so like i could use like fractal i could
15:58use just this noise which has all sorts
16:01of noise in it
16:03but for this
16:04i usually like to use
16:06simplex noise and the reason for that is
16:10like i can adjust the scale
16:13and
16:15different
16:16ratios
16:18and
16:20get like islands like these black
16:23islands
16:24uh really easily
16:26and
16:29by being able to get
16:32islands you can more easily
16:35tweak
16:37where things are gonna show up and and
16:39you can get
16:40uh
16:41like this higher contrast
16:43really easily
16:45with the simplex noise so basically
16:49what i want to do
16:50is i just kind of want to figure out
16:52like how contrasty i want this to get
16:55and
16:57i really
16:58just want to figure out like where all
17:00uh do
17:02like how frequently do i want my my mud
17:04to pop up
17:06and
17:07yeah like i could say like look at this
17:09and say like hey i
17:12don't
17:13like how
17:15my my mud is looking like i want to get
17:17more resolution out of that texture well
17:19this is a tiling texture so that means
17:22that i can just go in here and you know
17:24if i want the frequency in my mud to be
17:28double
17:28that of
17:31my
17:33to be double that of my rock then you
17:35know i can just set
17:37my place 2d texture to tile
17:41eight times
17:42and now i got eight times
17:44the resolution
17:47out of that texture
17:50which was already 4k to start
17:52and
17:54it is you know a tiling texture and at
17:57eight times you would definitely notice
17:58the pattern by now but
18:01since i mean before when i was showing
18:03you the the swatch
18:04like you could really easily see a
18:06pattern after just like four or five
18:08times if it's small enough especially
18:11but
18:12yeah here i am
18:13tiling it
18:14eight times
18:16and
18:18yeah then there it is um
18:21coming through getting all that
18:23that resolution out of it and then you
18:25know if i want to
18:26change how this appears
18:30well
18:31then i always just i'm able to go in
18:34here
18:34and edit my my simplex noise
18:38where
18:40you know if i wanted to show through
18:41more evenly i can introduce more gray
18:43values
18:47and
18:48if i want my islands
18:53like i can make these
18:55these really stark islands but then
18:57up my frequency and now this is like
19:00effectively
19:02tiling
19:04as well you can kind of build like
19:07tiles on top of tiles
19:11stuff like that
19:13and if i just want
19:14so like i can have several
19:17smaller islands
19:18or
19:20you know i could just have it
19:23like adjust things where it like even
19:24just shows up
19:26like a little bit
19:28here and there
19:31change my distortion
19:46don't mess around with my scale
19:50i had to decide like where all i wanted
19:52to show up like maybe i want like a
19:53bunch of mud in some place but like i
19:55want
19:57hardly any and another
20:03so like here like i said
20:06getting that
20:07that sort of mud
20:09meets rock
20:15effect
20:17and
20:24but yeah but let's get let's get a few
20:26more patches
20:28in there
20:30so
20:47so there we go yeah i got my
20:50and since the noise is you know a
20:53randomized pattern it adds that like
20:57the
20:59when
21:00i mean it adds that layer of yeah like
21:03sort of making like a natural formation
21:05uh where your texture can appear you
21:08know kind of work for you
21:10because before
21:12uh
21:14the like if you just straight tile a
21:16texture
21:18like the the issue is that you
21:19immediately lose your randomness and you
21:23get a very recognizable pattern and then
21:25this
21:26gives you that advantage of tiling a
21:28texture
21:28while making it so that you just totally
21:32uh reintroduce
21:34all of that randomness and like also in
21:36this case we're still
21:38like building up a texture
21:40and
21:41and we get these like you know all these
21:43fun dials where we can kind of
21:44dynamically tweak things
21:46to suit whatever kind of terrain we're
21:48texturing because of course we're not
21:50going to just be texturing a plane
21:53um but anyway let's get
21:55let's start blending in our grass and
22:00for some sometimes with the grass i'll
22:02you just use regular noise because it's
22:03easier to get
22:04like a better spread so to speak but
22:07i'll use simplex again
22:09and we'll even just see
22:11well i guess before
22:14actually before i even do that let's
22:16just
22:17see what our grass looks like
22:19so how much do we need to tile it for
22:21our grass to look believable so our
22:23grass is now full white on its blend so
22:26that means we get we get nothing but it
22:28and we can see that these sticks are
22:31very much not a believable scale so that
22:34means yeah we're going to need to go
22:36ahead and tile this
22:39i mean i can try and have them pass for
22:41logs but also again you want to get more
22:43resolution out of it
22:45so let's go
22:47up here to my grass
22:50and
22:52let's hit
22:53let's go straight to six
22:56and we'll walk it back from there if we
22:58need to
23:01render
23:05and
23:09for the apparent scale
23:12of our twigs
23:14this is probably
23:17believable
23:21i could maybe
23:22push it a little further though let's go
23:24let's go two more actually
23:26we'll go
23:27eight
23:38yeah
23:40and at eight you know we we get a very
23:42apparent pattern but yeah this is
23:43probably more of the scale of our
23:45details that like compared to our
23:47character that they should be and
23:50yeah and we're getting that much more
23:53resolution out of this but yeah now
23:54let's let's bring in our noise
23:57to our material blender
23:58and let's see what's going on
24:00material blender and we'll go
24:05uh
24:07like i said any noise will will do but
24:09i'll go with simplex i really tend to
24:12like it a lot for this kind of work
24:14and
24:15let's just let's just hit render at the
24:17default and see what we're getting
24:21and
24:30you know what overall that's that's not
24:33bad like kind of
24:35immediately
24:36not not too bad
24:41you know we still get our bare rock
24:43coming through in places
24:47you still get some bare mud coming
24:49through in places but yeah it's still
24:51blending in
24:52over top
24:54but
24:56even
25:04maybe go
25:07a little more
25:11prevalent here
25:23and i don't know
25:25i could
25:27go about
25:29tweaking this a lot maybe
25:31maybe i won't even scatter this as much
25:35as i am
25:36maybe i'll walk this back
25:38let's let's see how it looks if we
25:44yeah kind of do it more
25:51like i did
25:54when i got just like a big
25:59some some bigger
26:01darker splotches
26:16um
26:31just
26:32tweaking
26:41there we go
26:42tweak that ratio
26:50now this will give us like a splotch
26:53up in the corner more so or in this
26:56corner
26:59but yeah that's not
27:04it's not bad here we can start to see
27:07our tile more so
27:15and of course
27:16like i'm just working with three things
27:17here you can keep building and building
27:21but you know and i think it was better
27:22when it was
27:26more
27:27all over
27:35and
27:38you know
27:39these are just three textures that i
27:40thought would work i didn't like pick
27:42things that would be perfect but you
27:44know this this is giving us a decent
27:46look i kind of like how the
27:48how this splotch lands right in the
27:50middle of this splotch of black and
27:54yeah and then this is a break up enough
27:57that we're not seeing our textures come
27:59through
28:00yeah this will work this will work well
28:04okay
28:06so that's all well and good but yeah now
28:08let's let's plug in
28:10uh let's have the rest of our maps uh
28:13match
28:14the
28:17let's have the rest of our maps match
28:20the same amount of tiling yeah so this
28:22is eight
28:24so go through
28:26eight
28:28and eight
28:31and
28:34i got the displacement shader up here
28:36this is eight
28:38make sure that my displacements are
28:40tiling correct also
28:43and this is no problem
28:52and
28:54simplex noise don't need to mess with
28:56this is 4. i already went through
29:01and changed all of those although
29:04i'm going to need to make sure oh i
29:06changed my displacement already also and
29:08then the mud
29:10is also going eight okay
29:13so sure
29:15but
29:16yeah i could have gone lower frequency
29:18with any of these
29:20for sure
29:21i just kind of let the scale of my
29:23visuals guide me and it kind of
29:26just landed me here
29:30and
29:34then my mud's displacement is down here
29:37at eight
29:39also
29:42four for the rock and then
29:46displacement
29:48okay
29:49so now let's see how it looks now that
29:51all of our maps
29:54are lining up like they should be
29:59because this should help a little also
30:04yeah because it really helps you get
30:06these just like these nice blends
30:08between your surfaces too
30:22all right
30:25and
30:29let's do this okay so let's get the the
30:31redshift displacement blender which like
30:33i said doing the the displacement
30:35blending in arnold if you're doing that
30:38uh
30:40is
30:42usually
30:43what
30:44i would do
30:45with uh
30:47just the the maya layered texture node
30:50okay
30:51but anyway we got our
30:54base input which should again be our
30:57rock
30:59so i'm going to navigate
31:01down to where a rock bed
31:03displacement is
31:05and
31:07that's going to be our
31:09base input
31:12and
31:17then
31:22our
31:24next input is going to be our mud which
31:26is down here
31:28and
31:31it's going to be displace input
31:34zero
31:37and
31:38then
31:39our next one
31:40is going to be our sticks
31:45which is
31:51up
31:52here which there are easier ways to kind
31:54of like
31:56connect things but i'm just trying to be
31:59as visual as possible for here although
32:02you'll notice that you only have three
32:04layers of displacement to blend between
32:06where the the layer shader
32:10the material blender goes all the way up
32:11to six layers so
32:16so there's that
32:17and
32:20okay now we would want our weights to
32:23happen
32:24in very much a similar fashion
32:27so
32:29this simplex noise 2
32:32this out color would be or
32:35use the alpha
32:37would be our displacement weight
32:400
32:41and then
32:42this one
32:44would be our displacement weight one
32:47and then this is going into the the out
32:49of our displacement blender it's going
32:51into the displacement
32:53of our material blender and now we've
32:55built out
32:56one hell of a network with blended
32:59displacements
33:01and
33:03blended materials all combined with
33:05layered
33:08fractals and oops let's go into redshift
33:14capital clark only
33:16displacement enable
33:19and i might have to tweak my scales and
33:21stuff
33:23but let's see what we would get
33:28oh
33:40and you'll share
34:01and oopsie poopsie there
34:03uh
34:05just had a small slip just plugged in my
34:08my color into my displacement input one
34:10where of course i want to put in
34:12my uh
34:14displacement
34:16which only makes sense
34:18and now
34:20with that done
34:26my displacements
34:32will heaven
34:37which it looks like
34:41they could stand to be pushed
34:55yeah
34:57let's see what we got here
34:59let's change my maximum displacement i
35:01think my scale is already being pushed
35:05on some of these
35:06so i'm going to push my
35:09maximum displacement here to
35:114.
35:18and
35:19yeah now we're getting
35:20much more
35:22happening
35:25and of course this is all being blended
35:26with the same noise that i use to blend
35:30everything else
35:35and i can even push certain things
35:41crazy far if i want to try
35:46like if i wanted my rock to come through
35:49much more aggressively
35:52let's say
35:56which let's even up my
36:00let's try something real crazy let's
36:02let's double it
36:04and
36:05then
36:06i'll go to my displacement for my rock
36:10bed
36:12which is
36:13here very good
36:15and yeah
36:17i'll push my scale all the way to 8.
36:20so
36:34now we can see
36:36how much more
36:38the rock punches through
36:42where our mud is still kind of pushed
36:44down
36:45lower so we get these like pits of mud
36:49in our
36:50rocky terrain
36:51and uh yeah over here it's especially
36:54nice where we kind of get this smaller
36:57island
36:58where the
37:00or the rock kind of has like a natural
37:02peak
37:03almost
37:05in the midst of everything
37:10and
37:11yeah
37:13okay
37:14well
37:16uh
37:18and then you know applying this to
37:19geometry that's you know already
37:22sculpted already deformed like this is
37:25just crazy
37:26useful crazy helpful you can get some
37:29really wild and just
37:31premium
37:32look to to how your
37:36your objects
37:37and uh your characters render and like
37:39just how your your terrain renders like
37:41i said this is all focus
37:43on the rendering for
37:45for your various terrain and
37:48since you're allowed to
37:49since this permits you to more easily
37:51push your tiling even further you can
37:53get more and more resolution
37:56which will out of all of your textures
37:58which will allow you to
38:01kind of have them pass
38:03more and more
38:05scrupulous examination
38:10and yeah we're getting some really nice
38:13peaks and valleys
38:18anyway
38:19uh
38:21that's it
38:23you have a good day

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