From BlenderWiki

Texture Plugins

Description

Texture plugins are external files that can be loaded up in the Blender interface, which provide controls in the Plugin panel based on what they can do. A plugin texture is a dynamically loaded library that exists as a separate file on your computer. When called in, it generates the texture. A standard set of plugin textures are distributed with Blender and are located in the Blender Foundation/Blender/plugins/texture directory, or wherever the pathspec points to in the User Preferences → File Paths → Tex Plugins field.

These plugins are developed by various people, and a general central collection site is hosted at the Blender Plugin Repository. See also this page for plugins lists and links. A recent brick texture can be found through the BlenderArtists forum. When you find a good texture plugin, we recommend that you put a copy in your personal library (lib/plugin/texture) directory.

Plugins now work correctly with multi-threaded rendering. Prior versions using multi-threads will result in black or white spots or streaks in the render. To work around this, use single-threaded rendering.

Sample List of Available Texture Plugins

For the current list, examples, and more information about each plugin, please click the above link. Just to give you a quick idea as to the diversity and range of textures that are available as of January 2008:

afterglow

Afterglow unlike Other plugins is both a Texture and a Sequence plugin for glowing objects in Blender.

brick

Brick-drawing plugin, based on a sample plugin from NaN.

brick1

Creates a brick texture.

ceramictiles

This is a C implementation of the BMRT ceramictiles shader written by Larry Gritz.

chip

This code is based at Ken Perlin's famous works...

chip2

This code is based at Ken Perlin's famous works...

circdots_rgb

blender plugin for generating circular dots (source written/compiled by sylvio sell, 2006 )

clouds2

Creates a nice cloud texture similar to the builtin one.

dots2

Makes nice pok-a-dots.

fixnoise

Creates a random static noise map, use this if your doing an animation instead of the builtin noise.

greenmarble

This is a C implementation of the BMRT greenmarble shader written by Larry Gritz.

led

Creates LED numbers like on a digital clock.

lyapunov

blender plugin for generating Lyapunov fat fractals. (source written/compiled by sylvio sell, dec 2004 )

mandeltex

blender plugin for exploring Benoit Mandelbrot's fractal set. (source written/compiled by rob haarsma, between dec 95 and april 1999)

matrix

Creates noise similar to clouds and novichip.

musgrave

a procedural texture plugin for blender that generates (and bumps !) Kent Musgrave's fractal noise patterns.

novichip

Another noise plugin similar to clouds or matrix

pattern

This plugin uses the sin function to create various patterns Similar to the sinus plugin a bit different however.

pie

blender plugin for pie shaped divs.

r_weave

Weave plugin that does fake bumpmapping and is tileable.

refract

Fakes Refraction.

rings2

This produces a ring-like pattern, much like the wood texture, but this is a 4D texture. (OK, 3D really, but the third is time, not Z). acceleration.

rtilings

with this plugin you can create regular tilings of a plane (based on squares, triangles or hexagons).

sarah0

The sarah0 plugin (a.k.a. Sarah's first plugin) If you like this plugin you should really check out the main website for the latest version. Bricks, tiles, interlocking patterns, you name it.

scales

This plugin generated a texture pattern that resembles fish scales. Through settings, I suppose it could also do a round shingled roof.

sinus

This plugin uses the sin function and some constants you can modify to get different textures

spirals

Spiral Drawing plugin.

t_bricks

This plugin generates brick textures with bumpmapping.

t_clouds

This plugin generates cloud textures with bumpmapping.

t_marble

This plugin generates marble and or wood textures with bumpmapping.

t_marble_terrain

This plugin generates marble textures with slope and altitude constraints and bumpmapping.

t_terrain

This plugin generates cloud textures with slope and altitude constraints and bumpmapping.

t_wood

This plugin generates wood textures with bumpmapping.

tiles

Creates a nice checkerboard pattern you can also add some noise to it.

trellis

Create various regular 2D tiling patterns, also a true 3D cubic texture (like cells in POVRAY)

voronoi

a procedural texture plugin for blender that generates Voronoi cell structures.

water

Animate various kinds of ripples of water, like rain or just a dripping tap. There are many settings and they can be distorted by 'wobbly' noise. Very nice for all kinds of "wet" effects.

wbricks

more advanced brick texture

Options

Load Plugin

Opens a file select window to browse for a plugin to load. These plugins are dll files on Windows, .so files on Mac and various Unix flavors.

Once a plugin is loaded it turns the Texture Buttons window into its own set of buttons, as described in the individual plugin references.

Technical Details

Blender allows the dynamic linking at run time of shared objects, both texture and sequence plugins. In both cases these objects are pieces of C code written according to a given standard (chapter_plugin_reference). In the case of texture plugins, these chunks of code define functions accepting coordinates as input and providing a Color, Normal and Intensity output, exactly as the procedural Textures do.

See Also

• Blender's Plugin System