The Leather solid texture is ideal for creating a range of effects such as concrete, Styrofoam and alligator skin, as well as leather. For many applications, a simple pix file of leather will suffice for a good leather simulation. However, it is sometimes nearly impossible to map a file texture to a surface without distortions and discontinuities (mapping a simple two-dimensional file texture to an automotive dashboard, for example). Worldspace texture mapping is one solution to this problem, but it requires more effort and does not work for all possible topologies. The procedural Leather texture overcomes these problems by using a 3D noise of spheres to simulate a leather surface. This texture is unlike leather in that real leather is a surface, and not a substance. However, this texture can nicely simulate many types of animal skin, particularly when used as a bump map.
If the surface is deformed during an animation (morphing), then the effect will not be natural, as the surface will move through the solid texture.
The texture is made up of a collection of spheres suspended in a medium.
| Argument Name | Absolute Range | Useful Range | Default | Description |
| cell_color | -infinity, infinity | 0 to 255 | 95.0, 40.0, 15.0 | Determines the color of the spheres used in the procedure. |
| crease_color | -infinity, infinity | 0 to 255 | 60.0, 30.0, 0.0 | Determines the color of the medium in which the spheres are suspended. |
| cell_size | 0, infinity | 0 to 1 | 0.5 | Determines the general size of the texture and is equivalent to scaling the texture DAG node. |
| density | 0, infinity | 0 to 1 | 1.0 | Determines the average number of spheres per node of the 3D lattice used in the procedure. The spheres are fully packed at a density value of 1.0. |
| spottyness | 0, infinity | 0 to 1 | 0.1 | Determines the randomization of the general intensity of the Cell_color. At a value of 1.0, the intensity is fully random (if the threshold parameter is set to 0.00). |
| randomness | 0, infinity | 0 to 1 | 0.5 | The spheres or cells are oriented in a regular 3D lattice by default. The position of the spheres is perturbed by the Randomness value. At a value of 1.0, the sphere location is totally random and at a value of 0.00, the location of the spheres is totally regular. |
| threshold | 0, infinity | 0 to 1 | 0.83 | Determines the amount that the two colors used in the procedure mix into each other. At a threshold of 1.0, no mixing occurs and the spheres appear as solid color dots. |
| creases | 0, 1 (OFF, ON) | OFF, ON | ON | If Creases is set to ON, the spheres don’t mix with each other. This creates boundaries like those found in a collection of living cells. The resulting texture has edges that resemble creases in leather. If Creases is set to OFF, the spheres diffuse uniformly into each other and no straight line segments appear on the resulting texture. |
| transformation_name | no default. |
