Is there a way to simulate material texture like wood or bamboo? I didn't see one but was hoping for at least normal maps, or maybe something fancy, like displacement maps and tessellated geometry to simulate how well details of your relief would show against a particular grain.

Hi Chris,

Unfortunately there is not yet a means of setting any kind of texture on the canvas/simulation rendering, but I could add it to the todo list! I don't think it would be too difficult to add that functionality. Do you have any suggestions for default included textures? I imagine this would be something accessed via Canvas Appearance and Simulation Appearance where the colors/curves are.

 - Charlie

Hi Chris,

I started working on a parametric wood grain system as a simulation appearance option for PixelCNC projects:

I plan to include a few presets that resemble some wood grains and colorations. Do you think this might do the job for you?

 - Charlie

Hi Charlie,

Wow. Looks good! Yeah I think that would help a lot. It would save a lot of trouble compared to fiddling with PBR textures when you can just adjust some parameters until it looks right. Nice work!

To answer your earlier question, I've been mostly interested in hardwoods lately: cherry, walnut, bamboo, oak, and the like. I'm still very new at this though so I'm not sure what defaults would be more generally useful.

Just for fun, here is a draft of a relief I'm working on in Blender for my video game-loving siblings and myself. The plan is to put it on a display-only side of a cutting board.

Chris