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I am looking for a way to smooth/blur the edges of a crunched procedural texture using nodes. (for example a noise texture)

The way I want to do this is by placing 'the solution node setup' between nodes for full control.

Also, is it possible to have the scaling of the blur always match the input size? (so that the image won't get blurred more or less when aplied to a different model.)

enter image description here

I want to achieve a result like the image shown below: enter image description here

PS: feel free to edit the question if my english confuses you :)

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Delagone
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    May be helpful for you: http://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/9394/how-to-blur-a-texture-node-in-cycles-material – Paul Gonet Nov 22 '16 at 17:42

1 Answers1

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To blur such a procedural texture, you can't simply add a 'blur' node or similar at the point you indicate. Instead, you need to manipulate the input Vector to distort the texture and then rely on the Render Samples to produce the blurring.

One easy way of achieving this is to add the nodes shown.

blur nodes

Use the relevant output of the Texture Coordinate node (Generated, Object, UV, etc) depending on how you want the texture (and blurring) to be applied. The 'Subtract' node is set to its default (mid-gray) with factor set to 1.000 - this is to adjust the Noise texture to ensure the blurring is even. The Noise texture is set to a very high scale and the Factor of the Add node can be adjusted to change the strength of the blur (0 = no blur, 1.0 is maximum blur).

As mentioned, you should set your Render Samples (on the Render properties) to a higher value so as to allow the rendering enough samples to produce a clean 'blur'.

Samples

Examples showing no blurring and blurring :

no blurblurred

Rich Sedman
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  • Sorry for the extremely late response. You have a nice solution to blurring the noise except it's not exactly what I'm searching for. I need the blurred output image for a displacement input. Any thoughts? – Delagone Feb 03 '17 at 16:22
  • Hi @Delagone in that case, for displacement, you'll be best saving the texture at a resolution suitable for the resolution of the mesh that you are displacing and then blurring it in an external package (eg, Gimp - Filter, Gaussian Blur, and adjust it for the level of blurring you require). That way you'll get an efficient and consistent blur rather than dynamically generated. Due to the Vector nature of how procedural textures are produced I don't think yhere's any other way as multi-sampling won't work for displacement. – Rich Sedman Feb 03 '17 at 19:40
  • @RichSedman Ok, Sure would be nice if we could have something in blender to do such things internally from an artistic point of view. I'm thinking procedural rock generation and stuff... . Just to give it that extra oomph. – Delagone Feb 04 '17 at 13:15