Procedural textures are a category of textures that generate patterns that can be used individually or in combination with other texture nodes to create common surface effects. This is a memory-efficient way to generate patterns, as the calculations require less memory than loading bitmap images. Procedurals can create rock and marble surfaces, chequered or wooden textures, bump maps, and other advanced materials with minimal impact to GPU memory. It is advantageous to explore creating materials using these textures before resorting to image-based textures.



Procedural Textures



Figure 1: The Checks procedural texture multiplied with an Iridescent procedural texture