Isotropic stochastic procedural textures by example

Procedural textures have significant advantages over image textures. Procedural textures are compact, are resolution and size independent, often remove the need for a texture parameterization, can easily be parameterized and edited, and allow high quality anti-aliasing. However, creating procedural textures is more difficult than creating image textures. Creating procedural textures typically involves some sort of programming language or an interactive visual interface, while image textures can be created by simply taking a digital photograph. In this paper we present a method for creating procedural textures by example, designed for isotropic stochastic textures. From a single uncalibrated photograph of a texture we compute a small set of parameters that defines a procedural texture similar to the texture in the photograph. Our method allows us to replace image textures with similar procedural textures, combining the advantages of procedural textures and image textures. Our method for creating isotropic stochastic procedural textures by example therefore has the potential to dramatically improve the texturing and modeling process.nrpages: 12status: publishe