Functionality similar to the 3ds Max plug-in MultiTexture Map

I wasn’t quite sure where to post this, but I wanted to let anyone who is interested know about a set of node groups I created that are somewhat of an add-on for the Cycles Render Engine that can randomly assign up to 20 textures to any objects using the material, along with each texture’s Specular, Translucency or SSS, Transparency, Bump and/or Normal, and Displacement maps. These node groups will also randomly change the diffuse color’s Hue, Saturation, and Value for each separate object, which basically gives functionality similar to the 3ds Max plug-in MultiTexture Map from cg-source.com, although not quite as user friendly. I say not quite as user-friendly because without knowing any python, I had to try and make them work with the existing nodes in Blender, and honestly being able to figure out how to make them work and have them work as well as they do is still a bit of a miracle to me. When I was starting out, I really had no idea it was even possible to have them do what they do without writing a script. Here are some links if you would like to learn more about MultiTexture and at least some of the things my node groups and MultiTexture can be used for:
http://www.ronenbekerman.com/using-floor-generator-script-by-bertrand-benoit/
http://www.peterguthrie.net/blog/2012/06/hendee-borg-house-exteriors
http://bertrand-benoit.com/blog/2011/08/03/vintage-herringbone-parquet-tutorial-and-free-maps/

As an added bonus, I also made a node group that can randomly change the Glossy node’s color and roughness value for each separate object. You can see where I got the idea for this and at least one of the ways it can be used here where he talks about the black mats reflecting differently:
http://bertrand-benoit.com/blog/2014/06/15/salle-labrouste/

Eventually, I would like to turn these node groups into a full add-on, but until then, hopefully you will still find them useful.

The node groups along with full documentation can be found on Blendswap here:

Also, here is an in-depth video showing how to use all of the settings:

and here are two images I created that show them being used on a wood floor with single wood plank images from CGtextures.com, and the diffuse and glossy randomization nodes being used on a plain red color




2 Likes

Nice, thank you!

I feel like this is severely underrated. Thank you so much for the node groups, an addon would be great but this is more than good enough for now :smiley:

ArtOfLight thank you for your node group.
It’s really useful.

Impressive !
Thanks for sharing

Wow!! Thanks for the nice comments. You’re very welcome; I’m glad you will be able to use them!

Thank you for this - I think this could be really useful for setting up for baking as well for game engine use

Thanks - this may prove very useful for my ship building projects as well.

Craig Jones -
You’re right, they probably would be pretty useful for games; I had forgotten about that. I’m glad you mentioned it.

Herbert123 -
Awesome, that would be great if it helps!

I just wanted to let everyone know that I’ve updated the node groups. If it’s needed, I’ll probably be making a time-lapse video that shows how to use it in a project, but it might be about a month or so before I can make it. So I thought I would go ahead and release it so that everyone can start using it, instead of waiting for the video to be done. The basic idea of the node groups is the same, but I changed it so that each type of texture like diffuse, specular, normal map, etc. can be added in as they are needed instead of all at once. I think this will make the node groups much more versatile and easier to use, and it also keeps the Add Node Group stack much smaller. There is also a new feature I added that can randomly rotate textures by 180 degrees, making things look even less repeated. Also, thanks to this post: http://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/15076/what-is-the-easiest-way-to-have-a-material-randomize-the-image-textures-it-uses/15103#15103 by someonewithpc the textures are distributed much more efficiently, which seems to have fixed something I became aware of recently where using more than 12 normal maps made the material completely black. I don’t know what this was but for some reason, it seems Blender wasn’t able to handle all of the calculations being done after that point and just made the whole material black. Hopefully the images below will explain at least a basic way of setting up all of the node groups together but if anyone has any questions, feel free to ask. Also, if anyone has any ideas to improve the node groups, I would be happy to try to implement something.

Here are the images: