[Mihai]

But how can it work for planar surfaces like walls and floors? Any 2D surface?

[gmenzel]

So it really is just a blended cube map. 3ds max has something similar: http://area.autodesk.com/learning/serie ... ed-box-map

[burnin]

Yes, even blender has it.
Can be mixed, masked, layered... using different scale, rotation, location for mapping.
The advantage comes in form of saved artists time.

[seghier]

But how can it work for planar surfaces like walls and floors? Any 2D surface?

like in the video ; it is like when we paint in mudbox or blender or photoshop and use texture brush to avoid tiling and clear repetition
the wall material in maxwell studio for example use a texture and when we render we see tiles and repetition

So it really is just a blended cube map. 3ds max has something similar: http://area.autodesk.com/learning/serie ... ed-box-map

yes but why autodesk change the name of something already exist since years
anyway
3dsmax users also need this triplanar feature if they use blended box map

[Mihai]

What I'm saying is, the most useful thing about this "Triplanar" thing seems to be the random texture tile rotation and offset, which would be nice to have. The blending of the texture seams stuff doesn't look so good - as was mentioned it would work ok for far away stuff but if you plan to use it to texture a leather sofa as you mentioned....it will look pretty bad unless the camera was pretty far way.

[seghier]

the problem with uvmapping and tiled texture that we see the tiling
the blending avoid this problem and will look better than what we use in maxwell ; look better doesn't mean it is great but still a good solution

[seghier]

some examples from different softwares :
vred :
https://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/ ... 1-htm.html
Triplanar settings define how a texture is placed on the surface and how the planar projection is blended at the edges.
Contrary to all other materials that could have textures assigned, the Triplanar material type lets you have a custom mapping on different object sides within one material definition. Features to adjust these settings are accessible from standard UI. This type is recommended to create, for example, leather, fabric and diffuse plastic materials.

indigo :
http://www.indigorenderer.com/materials/materials/1582
Triplanar image mapping shader for texturing objects without UV unwrapping. Best used with tiling textures which will blend at the overlapping edges. Includes parameters for scaling the texture and adjusting the edge "overlap" (gamma parameter).

Substance Designer :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3qGf89SF7g4
...the Tri Planar node to remove seams on procedural noises

houdini :
https://www.sidefx.com/docs/houdini/nod ... narproject

and many other softwares

[Mihai]

the problem with uvmapping

The "uvmapping" itself is not the problem, this still uses uvmapping - planar uv mapping, with randomization. Giving it a fancy name like Triplanar doesn't make it more than what it is. And imagine it won't be suitable at all for things like wooden floors, ceramic tiles, anything that needs a certain consistent structure. Using this for a leather sofa texture will look pretty nasty too. So I think we should add some randomization parameters to the texture tiles, and why not blending as well, but keep in mind this will have a pretty limited usefulness, despite its fancy name. You'll certainly still have to deal with uv unwrapping in many cases and make sure to use high rez textures.

[seghier]

No it not like what you say
When you use an object which don't have uvmapping . in this case uvmapping is a big problem
And you need get the best result but you don't have choice between cube cylender plane .... Mapping or retoplogy !
How you apply planar mapping to a rock model ?
Triplanar it is not just a simple cube mapping because it detect the shape

[burnin]

OK... some more info, to clear things up:

Vray Custom Triplanar is new (3 textures) and works only Gpu, but Triplanar projection has been there for year(s) and its only for Cpu. Its basically the same than box mapping but without uvw’s.

Vray Custom Triplanar with Gpu (Blender version):

source @ RedShift

Yup would be nice...

[tom]

honestly it's a poor trick from my personal standpoint... i just don't say we won't have it one day but it's not a big deal at all.

[limbus]

If you have to work with complicated geometry that has bad or no UVs, it is a real time saver (triangulated CAD models). Sometime it makes using a texture map even possible at all. It also saves you from unwrapping UVs on many objects. And you get a seamless texture projection. Very useful for stuff like rocks, sand, trees, leather etc...

So honestly, it is by no means a poor trick.

[gloomer]

it is a very nice feature! I wish!

[Nasok]

TriPlanar projection is a nice little feature but it has it's cons.

The way it works is that it projects 3 versions of the same texture (1 per axis) using world coordinates. It is close to a cube projection, the only difference is that it basically ignores size and rotation, it is always using world coordinates. In some versional of TriPlanar projection you have the ability to adjust the blending border and the randomness for the texture angle as well as texture position within projection. So you can shift, rotate and tile texture within those 3 axises.

The down side of TriPlanar is that it doesn't really work well on moving objects for obvious reasons and you can't go precise if you need to. So it will work fine for abstract noises (like scratches, smudges, and etc) but once you decide to place a scratch or a fingerprint smudge on a specific spot on your model - you'll struggle )

In Maya, for instance, we already have something similar - called Texture 3D - it is a version of TriPlanar projection. Can't say I've ever used it

Having TriPlanar projection method is probably a good idea, so that way you can easily add random grime, wear and abstract textures to some objects, especially for those of us who is using software which can't offer a really nice UV editing tools.

[gloomer]

if this feature helps to avoid UV mapping at least sometimes - this feature is very useful