PROCEDURAL HERRINGBONE PATTERN USING VEX & MATERIALX

This tutorial demonstrates how to create a procedural herringbone tile pattern entirely inside Houdini, using VEX scripting for geometry creation and MaterialX in Solaris for texturing and shading.

The process starts by exploring the mathematics behind herringbone design, focusing on tile dimensions, spacing, and angle alignment. Using this understanding, a custom point cloud is built through VEX code, with user-defined parameters for tile width, length, rows, and columns. A nested loop system is used to place tiles in alternating patterns with precise vertical and horizontal offsets.

Next, direction vectors are assigned to enable tile rotation, and UVs are generated for each tile. These tiles are extruded to add borders, and groups are created for separating wooden faces from edges. In Solaris, the tiles are imported, grouped, and assigned shaders through MaterialX.

To introduce realism, unified noise textures, UV randomization with UDIMs, and custom frequency attributes are added to each tile. Finally, color ramps, range controls, and displacement mapping are used to bring out a wooden texture, finishing the herringbone design with options for further noise or color correction tweaks.