EDIT: Check out my newer, more accurate Red Oak here
I'm never satisfied with my wood shaders. I happened to be sitting on my floor, and started looking really closely at the oak floorboards, when I realized my previous wood shaders weren't cutting it. I also researched how real oak looks up close, and I've attempted to duplicate it somewhat. This is different from my previous shaders in that it's more "physically based." I learned that oak wood grain is actually like little tubes, and you can actually blow compressed air through it, so the grain here is modeled after that. Also the little lines running through aren't just lines, but they come from rays radiating out of the center line of the wood. It didn't quite come out as I hoped, but overall the effect is reasonably close to the look of red oak. Hope you like it!
Material ball is from JC Levet (although I modified the scene to remove stuff that is out of camera): http://www.blendswap.com/blends/materials/galvanized-steel-shader/
I'm always impressed by those artist who put serious research into their art work, shaders, materials, textures, etc. and then explain it to the viewers. I was motivated by your description to not only download your shader but to further research the nature of oak because I wanted to know more about it.
Thanks for both the shader and the education.
This looks incredible! I only wish it were open source, but I totally respect your decision to want credit. It looks really beautiful and I admire your devotion to accuracy.
Thanks, Miriam! Even though it's CC-BY, you can still use it freely, just mention where you got it. I used to make things that were CC0, but the problem with CC0 is that unscrupulous people can take your hard work and sell it, completely legally. I am perfectly happy to share my work with the community, and honestly I don't care about the credit... I just don't want anyone to make a profit from something I gave away for free!
Hey I love this shader and have been using it in a scene. I'm having a little trouble with adjusting the grain direction, though. I have two separate pieces of wood, one going along the Y axis, the other along the X. I want the grain to follow their respective axes, but fiddling with the Rotation attributes doesn't seem to affect the general grain rotation. Any suggestions?
Hey Furiant, glad you like it. I'm not sure why it's not working for you... if I set the Z Rotation to 90 degrees, it rotates the grain to the Y axis instead of the X axis as you'd expect. Maybe your piece has an odd rotation on it, so if you "apply" the rotation then the shader will work correctly?
Also you could model the piece along the X axis and then rotate it in Object Mode, which should keep the grain going the right way.
Let me know if any of this helps or not!
This is really rad. I've been looking for a procedural wood texture like this for a long time! It works really well - I had no idea you could do this kind of texturing in Blender. Thank you for making this and for giving it out for free!
Looks fantastic!