Procedural texture generation from the ground up?

Questions & Answers
1

Are there any tutorials that deal with coding procedural textures algorithms in Unity -- and that make no assumptions? I've found sample projects and discussions on the topic, but no decent tutorials.

Of course, there are these examples here: http://unity3d.com/support/resources/example-projects/procedural-examples.html

... so is it just up to me to dissect the code and try to figure out what's going on, or has anyone out there found some helpful resources?

Cheers!

2

I don't think you really need a Unity specific tutorial. I agree it might be nice to just open up a Unity project with a running example but, if you are good with the Texture2D class, and know your way around Get/SetPixel() routines (basically how to loop through, nothing fancy) you can use any algorithm. You might be just as well off searching any texture algorithm, let's say perlin noise, and finding that alogorithm on the internet, then implementing it into Unity. Even if Unity had a custom tutorial, it would use the same algorithms. You can probably find a good in-depth example on the internet that would help you understand it just as well as a Unity designed tutorial. And as long as the algorithm takes a pixel and output a value, this generic loop below will let you put in almost any formula you want.

You might have code like:

@MenuItem("Generate Noise");
static function GenerateNoise () {

     var tex = new Texture2D(width, height, /*stuff*/)
     for(var x : int = 0; x < width; x ++) {
         for(var y : int = 0; y < height; y ++) {
              Color col = CalculateNoise(x, y, someVariable);
              tex.SetPixel(x,y,col);
         }
      }
      //Save the texture see the wiki for several scripts that save data.
}

function CalculateNoise (var xCord : int, var yCord : int, var offset : int) {
     //implement your formula here;
}

Edit, now that I think of it. The terrain toolset has a multiple procedural generators. You could look at those to see how he produces the heightmaps.

3

To anyone finding this now, Unity has a built in Perlin noise function which makes this trivial.