Maxon's C4D procedural shaders are a very sophisticated way of designing materials
to apply to 3D models. This way of texturing a model using the procedural shaders
has very interesting aspects:
1. Procedural shaders are computed mathematically (in a similar way to fractals)
2. This is different to conventional pixel-based textures - which are limited to a finite size.
3. The procedural advantage is that when viewed close up they do not become 'pixelated'.
Procedural shaders allow you to create textures with anisotropic surfaces, multiple specular
highlights, volumetric woods, dramatic bump, sub polygon displacement and spectacular
rust - not easily achievable when using pixel based images (usually sourced from a digital
camera in the incorrect lighting environment of your 3D model and composition).
Procedural Shading reacts to the environment it is in.
Shaders are procedural, meaning that the colour you see is calculated by C4D based on
your entire model composition - taking 'everything' into account. This allows procedural
shaders to calculate their texture maps because the shader knows things about:
a, light intensity and angle of incidence
b, direction of the surface
c, where the camera is
Finally, because the procedural shaders are built into the core of C4D your can save your
project in the full knowledge that all your materials pre-sets (in the material editor) stay
in the C4D file.
