Basic Wood Material
This tutorial shows how to create an approximate wood material using Maya 2019 and Arnold 5. It works well for things like window trim, columns and beams, floors, and counters.
Note: for the sake of clarity if not brevity, node are referred to by both custom name and type, e.g. wood_MAT (aiStandardSurface).
1) Setting Up the UVs
2) Creating a Wood Grain
3) Adding Knots
4) Setting the Specular Roughness
Create a aiLayerRgba and rename it woodDiffuse. Create an aiStandardSurface and rename it wood_MAT.
Connect Out Color of woodDiffuse (aiLayerRgba) to Base Color of wood_MAT (aiStandardSurface). Connect Out Color of woodGrain (aiNoise) to Input 8 of woodDiffuse (aiLayerRgba). Disable Layer 1 and enable Layer 8.
3) Adding Knots
Create an noise [Texture] knotPlacement.
!! Note that this is a Maya noise texture node, NOT an Arnold one. !!
Frequency Ratio: 1
Depth Max: 1
Frequency: 8 (control the space of the knots)
Density: 0.025 (along with frequency controls the size of the knots)
Size Rand: 0.875
For the automatically created place2dTexture node:
Repeat UV: [0.5, 1.5] (stretches the circles into slight ovals along the U axis)
Connect Out Color of knotPlacement (noise) to p of knotColor (aiNoise).
Connect Out Color of knotColor (aiNoise) to Input 7 of woodDiffuse (aiLayerRgba). Make sure Layer 7 is enabled. Finally, connect Out Alpha of knotPlacement (noise) to Mix 7 of woodDiffuse (aiLayerRgba). This uses the initial black and white noise texture as a mask.
4) Setting the Specular Roughness
Create an noise [Texture] knotPlacement.
!! Note that this is a Maya noise texture node, NOT an Arnold one. !!
Frequency Ratio: 1
Depth Max: 1
Frequency: 8 (control the space of the knots)
Density: 0.025 (along with frequency controls the size of the knots)
Size Rand: 0.875
For the automatically created place2dTexture node:
Repeat UV: [0.5, 1.5] (stretches the circles into slight ovals along the U axis)