A fabric shader using Gabor noise

A combination of two perpendiclar anisotropic Gabor textures is an easy way to create textures that mimic fabrics. In this post we use this to create a simple denim fabric.

In a previous post I presented a simple node to provide Gabor noise. Anisotropic Gabor noise with a large direction vector has slightly undulating parallel lines. Two of these perpendicular to each other are an easy way to create a fabric like structure.

(Click to enlarge if you cannot see the individual threads of the fabric)

The material that is presented here is probably not as versatile or fast as the fabric node I presented earlier, but it does give a somewhat more natural result (at least in my opinion) and is foremost an example of how versatile Gabor noise is. Also, because a Gabor noise node is farly high on the todo list for Cycles this means in the future we might not be dependent on custom nodes as presented here.

Example node setup

The node setup here isnt exactly pretty (click to enlarge) but the main idea is the combination of two Gabor noise nodes (show in a previous post):

As indicated in the image both nodes have a fairly large direction vector which gives small lines. Both vectors are prependicular. The resulting noise is a value that may be less than zero and adding a value to the result as we do here allows for control over the apparent gap between the threads of the fabric. A hight value gives less visible space between the threads. Note that the scale value on the left controls the scaling of the UV-space. It has an effect on the variation of the noise but not on the number of threads per centimeter, that is completely controlled byt the direction vectors. The bandwidth value controls the quality: changing it gives less or more of a fluffy appearence to the threads.

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