Procedural Cactus

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Assignment: Texture a cactus model in Maya using procedural textures.

This was the model that we received, with leeway to edit the vase and cactus inside it. The model has the plant, a pot, a vase, dirt, and rocks.

WIPs

I experimented with different shaders and textures, just to learn and test my capability with them. I worked without a reference for most of my WIPs, since I just wanted to experiment with node based texturing. I liked the idea of using bump maps and displacement maps, but overall, I eventually settled on using a terracotta pot with half glaze, and a waxy looking plant. My second choice was something with more subsurface scattering or sheen, since I've seen succulents that look almost jelly like with the way the light passes through them.

Final Product

From where I left off with my last WIP, I toned down the sheen and subsurface scattering, and I tilted the edge of the glaze as well as added some more depth to the terracotta speckles. Overall, I'm pretty satisfied with how it turned out, especially considering that it was my first foray into node based texturing.

I rendered this out at 1920x1080, and it took around 5 minutes to render locally.

Issues and Troubleshooting

I think that this lesson and activity was well structured because I never felt too out of my depth, and I didn't really have any problems with my assignment beyond aesthetic adjustments. I did not struggle to grasp what we were doing, once I got the hang of it all.

Final Thoughts

I had a pretty good time with this project, it allowed me to experiment and get accustomed to the node based texturing that can be used in Maya, and through the amount of both major and minor edits I did, I can certainly see the benefit to using nodes to build textures for models.