Turns any 2D texture into a 3D texture that you can place on the surface using one of the available projection types. Use to adjust the texture placement on the surface.

Projection Color

The 2D texture to be used as a map.

Projection Type

Planar (default)
Spherical
Cylindrical
Ball
Cubic
Shrinkwrap
Planar
Places the texture on a planar surface and projects it onto the object.
Spherical

Places the texture inside a sphere and projects it onto the object.

Cylindrical

Places the texture inside a cylinder and projects it onto the object.

Ball

Places the texture inside a ball and projects it onto the object.

Cubic

Places images on each plane and projects them onto the object.

Shrinkwrap 

Uses spherical mapping, but truncates the corners of the map and joins them all at a single-pole, creating only one singularity (useful when you want to hide the mapping singularity).

Coord Space

Specifies the coordinate space to use. These include World, Object, Pref and UV space coordinates. Pref is short for 'vertex in reference pose'. The plugin can pass these vertices to Arnold (in addition to the regular, deformed vertices) which can, in turn, be queried by the noise shader so that the noise 'sticks' to the reference pose and does not swim as the mesh deforms.

  • Object space, where points are expressed relative to the local origin (center) of the object.
  • World space, where points are relative to the global origin of the scene.
  • Pref, which isn’t really a space, but rather a reference to a bind pose (note Pref does not work with NURBS surfaces).
  • UV, for texturing using the object’s local UV coordinates. Note that this calls the faster 2D noise API, not the 3D noise like all other coordinate spaces.

 

Coord Space: Object (default)
Coord Space: UV

Pref Name

Specify the name of the reference position user-data array. Previously, the name was hard-coded as "Pref", which is still the default. The array type can be RGB/RGBA as well as VECTOR.

p

Input coordinates of the 4D fractal noise function. The surface point is used when not defined (0). An arbitrary coordinate space can be specified manually by linking another shader into the P parameter. This is useful for all sorts of things such as being able to animate patterns flowing through objects, having patterns move along with objects, etc.

For example, a coordinate system that you're animating to move the noise field through an object (a common technique for doing water running over a surface) or a coordinate system that is defined relative to a larger object (e.g. think of a spaceship that's comprised of many smaller objects, and you want to paint noise over the whole surface).


Below are animations that show Pref space coordinates in use with a deforming object. Note how the texture sticks to the object when using Pref space coordinates, compared to Object/World space coordinates where the texture swims. 

 

Using World/Object Space - Texture Swims

 

Using Pref Space - Fixes Texture Swimming


U Angle

Changes the U angle (for spherical and cylindrical mapping only).

V Angle

Changes the V angle (for spherical mapping only).

Clamp Projection

Only applies the projection if the position is inside a unit box/sphere/cylinder (depending on the projection mode), otherwise, it uses the Default Color (disabled by default).

Default Color

The color to be used for unmapped points. If you map a texture to a material in such a way that it that does not cover the entire surface, the Default Color (black) shows through. To select a different color, click the color bar to choose a different color. To change the texture's coverage, use the Placement Matrix.

Matrix

Defines the 3D texture’s positioning and orientation in world space. 

 

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