In this Tutorial I will try to walk you through the procedure of creating a Realistic Mahogany Wood Texture in Maya using just procedural textures. This textures works perfectly with Mental Ray and the default maya renderer, unfortunately the Wood 3d texture doesn’t work in V-Ray for Maya, let’s hope the guys at Chaos Group will fix that soon.
1. We start with a simple Blinn, you can use Phong or Phong E as well, in the Hypershade window select Blinn.
Now we start working on the wood node:


or double click on the wood1 node in the hypershade window. Now that we are back into the wood1 Attribute Editor we have to play around with some setting so we can get the desired effect.
Wood Attributes
Vein Spread: 0.354 ()
Layer Size: 0.098
Randomness: 0.618
Age: 95.833
Grain Color: #682311
Grain Contrast: 0.455
Grain Spacing: 0.017
Noise Attributes
Amplitude X: 1.0
Amplitude Y: 1.0
Ratio: 0.264
(Again feel free to try your own settings, I have used these inputs because they work well for the feel I was going for)






Again don’t forget to experiment with your own colors and settings, feel free to share your results. I would love to see what you come up with. Here is the entire Shader map in case you guys wanna check it out.

[…] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Pixelcloth and oasim Karmieh. oasim Karmieh said: Creating Realistic Wood Texture using only Procedural Textures http://t.co/3b5iAFB #3d #tutorials #pixelophy […]
Awesome! Would be great to see a studio light tutorial for the wood texture applied to a sphere or something.
Will definitely try this
Keep up the good work.
So glad you like it, well stay tuned I will def have some more light tutorials coming soon! Let me know how it works out, would love to see your result.
Cheers
Sure pal. Will post my wood thingy scene as soon as I finish it. Looking forward to see the studio light tutorials.
You’re 3d scenes are so awesome! They are as good as Pixar’s.
thank you so much!
Thanks a ton, best tut on the web!
Thank you, so glad I could help out. And I would love to see your result.
Thanks for sharing a valuable tutorial. (-_-メ) Darn, could’ve used it 10 days ago before some done-did-deliverables. I liked the sample of the wooden “blockheads”; that’s what lured me here. I’m sure I’ll return.
[…] Creating Realistic Wood Texture in Maya, using only Procedural Textures […]
Very nice example of creating a procedural wood texture. Was looking for something like this. since when I apply textures to my objects, they look way too cg’ish. It’d be nice to see more tutorials like this but for the mia_material_x.
Where would you apply the Solid Fractal in Step 6 on a Mia_material?
Thanks
Hi, I’m having trouble getting the wood grain to look natural, it ends up quite blurry. It looks more like marble on a kitchen bench. I have gone through the tutorial twice ste-by-step but end up with the same result.
Which setting do I tweak to change pattern of the grain. The tutorial is amazing by the way, easy to follow for a beginner like me
Hey Kim, I’m really glad that you are finding the Tutorial helpful. Well about the grain you really gotta make sure the grain color doesn’t stand out that much and as I said in the tutorial as well the best way to do that is to actually take a wood texture and eyedrop the color of the grain of the wood color that you are trying to achieve also did you make sure to have the Fit to Group BBox clicked? cause that will make a lot of difference on your result, also you can also play around with the grain size to get the exact look for what you are going for.
Hope this is helpful.
Great texture, thank you for putting this up. Definitely salvaged my alchemy table 😉
Hi Oasim this is a very nice and well guided tutorial. I’ve followed every steps above until the end, except for one trouble that I really dont know how to apply these textures to my objects cause it seems that they dont let me select the objects when i open the materials attributes box and vice versa. Hitting the render button does not works as well. I’m a very beginner for Maya. Any solution ?
Hi Kim
So glad that you enjoyed and you found the tutorial helpful, well to add a shader to an object there are couple of ways to do it:
1. You can select the object go into hypershade right click and hold on the shader and select “Assign material to selection”
2. you can middle click and drag the shader over the object
3. Right click and hold on the object and from the drop down select” Assign Existing Material” and from there you select the material that you want.
hope this is helpful.
Great tutorial!
I’m using this currently to set up a scene that I plan on animating. It’s amazingly helpful! Better then what I was trying before! Thanks 😀
-Britt
Thank you so much, Really glad you found it helpful!
Thank you so much for utilizing time to publish “Creating Realistic Wood Texture in Maya, using only Procedural Textures
| Pixelophy, with Pleasure – texturing and lighting tutorials, character development, 3d animation
and 3d web design”. Many thanks once again ,Noah
Pleasure is all mine, I really hope you found the tutorial helpful!
Just wanted to take the time out to say thank you! Really appreciate the time you have taken to produce this great tutorial. I am currently working on an assignment in Uni and this helped a lot! Again, thanks!
Dilly
UK
Thank you so much for the lovely comment Dilly, really happy that you found my tutorial helpful, it really means a lot. Good luck with your assignment.
Oasim
[…] It is something I will fix after I put the final lights in the scene. Here is the tutorial I read, http://www.pixelophy.com/?p=105 Share this:TwitterFacebookLike this:LikeBe the first to like this. This entry was posted in […]
Where exactly did u get the ideas to write ““Creating Realistic Wood Texture in Maya, using only Procedural Textures | Pixelophy, with Pleasure –
texturing and lighting tutorials, character development, 3d
animation and 3d web design” cmpgns ? I appreciate it ,Nicki
Hey there, well the idea to write the “Creating Realistic Wood Texture in Maya, using only Procedural Textures” tutorial came after I worked on a personal piece and I had to create a wooden texture and I didn’t want to use photo textures, cause I wanted it to look real but a bit cartoony at the same time.
one of the finest tutorials I’ve seen and its really awesome i have a dumb doubt according this i got the feel of new wood or a polished wood like ply wood i would like to see an old little bit rough type of wood for that which option should i change sorry for my english but try to understand and reply please……………..
Really glad you like the tutorial! It’s not a dumb question at all, for a rough wood, I would remove all specular or reflections from the shader and I would make the bump stronger this will give it that rough look. Hope this helps
Hi Oasim, I just wanted to say your tutorial is amazing and it looks great rendered in mental ray. Do you know if it is possible to use maya’s procedural nodes plugged into a vray shader? It seems vray doesn’t support this workflow for procedural texturing, or I’m missing something. Thanks!
Thank you so much, V-Ray supports procedural texturing workflow without any problems, But unfrotunatly wood 3d texture doesn’t work, and I have tried to find a work around for a while now, I think it is posible to get that same wood look using ramp with some U or V wave and some noise, but haven’t tried it yet.
Hi Oasim. I rendered in mental ray , but only small part of the object was covered. are there any adjustments I should do?
Can you send me a screenshot to see what you mean by a small portion is covered.
Hi justin, did you make any adjustments when you rendered in mental ray?
I rendered in mental ray too, but only small part of the object was covered.
What do you mean only small part was rendered, can you upload a screenshot? and By the way My name is Oasim not justin
[…] Graph network for my door shader (tutorial here). […]
[…] Wood Texture – http://www.pixelophy.com/?p=105 […]
how can I scale the wood texture?
[…] used this tutorial to help develop my wood materials, and this one to help with the material for the chairs. All other […]
hy its awesome
Thank you
Excellant thanks for this awesome tutorial. Shading and texturing is my downfall and learn’t so much in this. Hard to find such a tutorial. Cheers!
Thank you so much for your lovely comment! It really means a lot that my tutorials helped you out.
This tutorial is great! I was wondering if I could get clarification though on step 8. What is it in the 3dplacement texture that gives you vertical grains? I’m playing around with the parameters that are shown in step 8′s 3dplacement node, but unsure what is actually happening when I change the scale, transform, and rotate parameters. Does this make sense? :/
Hello!!
I just want to say that this tutorial it’s amazing! I’m new of Maya and i’ve find this simple step-made tutorial really helpfull.
I have only 1 question :
What is the node named “Material Paste” connected to the blinn node? i cannot find it anywhere!!!
Thx a lot again!
TheUncleJack
Hey TheUncleJack,
I’m so happy to hear that you found the tutorial helpful, it really means a lot.
Material paste is just the a pasted shader node, when you copy a shader from one scene to the other it just adds the name pasted in front of the shader name.
Have fun with Maya you are going to love it.
Cheers,
Oasim
hey oasim , thank you , the tutorial is simple and amazing !
Pleasure is all mine, I’m really glad you found it helpful.
Thank you so much for this tutorial that helped me a lot !
Pleasure is all mine, I’m glad that you found the tutorial helpful!
thank you very much oasmin really a very good tutorial I hope and helping us follow tuts created especially in the textured part is where I feel I need to work a little more like me much hope you follow up your intake of vray tuts.
Greetings from Colombia
Pleasure is all mine, really means a lot that the tutorial helped you out.
Thank you sooo much for the tutorial! It is very simple and I enjoy messing with this wood texture. I am very appreciated it!
Hey there,
Pleasure is all mine, I’m really happy that you found the wood texture tutorial helpful. Really means a lot!
Hi Oasim,
This tutorial is excellent, thank you so much. I am having some trouble with the bump map section. I’m using Maya 2014. When I try to connect my duplicate wood procedural to the bump channel of the wood blinn, the connection editor pops up instead. I haven’t the faintest idea at all what to plug in where. If I try to select the color channel of the bump input, the bump outputs are all greyed out and I can’t select them. Do you have any idea what I should do?
Hey there,
It shouldn’t do that it should just connect it, knowing that Maya being Maya sometimes I really feel the software has a personality of it’s own, with that being said you can press on the small plus next to outcolor and choose one of the channels R G B and link to bump, I hope this helps
I used to be recommended this web site by means of my cousin. I’m now not sure whether this post
is written by means of him as no one else know such certain approximately
my trouble. You are amazing! Thank you!
Thanks a lot, glad you found it helpful!
hello, nice tutorial, but i want to know how to do the same shader in arnold renderer because i connected all to aiStandar material in Arnold but does not have any effect on it, thanks for sharing
(Y)
Thanks, really glad you like it, well I haven’t tried Arnold, but maybe when I get some free time (hopefully in this decade) I’ll def do a tutorial on that!
Can you help me bake the texture to my mesh for OBJ export for use in another program?
Thanks,
-CS
Hey Chris,
Do you want to bake the texture with all the light and shader attribute? or you just want the texture that the procedural shader is creating? if you only want the texture go Into the Hypershade choose Edit>Test Texture the size of the texture will be 256 by 256, click on the box to open the options and just a higher resolution, I hope this helps!
Not sure if this is still monitored, but how would I go about applying this to multiple objects in my scene. I tried just doing a mass apply with the texture but I wound up with something that looked like just one cut from the tree. all the grain perfectly flowing from one object to the next.
Hey Russall, the post is still monitored, can you please send me a screenshot so I can see exactly what results you are getting? Also you might try to tweak the place 3d texture to modify the size of the wooden grain and veins
when you have a minute 😀 make sure to signup to our newsletter http://eepurl.com/bf83-D cause we have lots of tutorials coming this year!
Hey OAsim Karmleh … i foudn this tut very insightful, but i would love to have the veins look bigger … im using it for a car dashboard but the wood texture looks like marble unless i render it up close … like very close … so i would like it to look like wood from far away … ive tried tweaking for an hour the attributes but i cant seem to have if fixed
Hey Ruben, did you try resizing the vein size under layer size? if it doesn’t work you should try scaling up the place the 3d object node and then just tweak the wood to get the look that you are going for.
It’s not working out for me oddly, can anyone send me the finished shader? Thanks!
I’m working on a section on the website with all the shaders, but meanwhile can you tell me what’s not working? cause from what I have learned, finding a solution to the problem is the best way to never forget the process.
Awesome guide, I’m having issues with part C I don’t see Bump Map on the list, is there another step that needs to be taken in Maya 2016?
Thanks for the guide,