Inside/Outside






Normal Shading

Reference Images &




Photoshopped Textures

Renderman Shader

The "Panther Lily" (Lilium pardalinum) - it looks like nature's floral tomato or jellyfish. Apparently there's a lot of interesting flowers out there, and this specimen was great to test my shader. Besides having a unique artistic aesthetic, the back sides of petals can be seen from most angles.

The shader I have written considers which direction a surface normal faces and assigns a color value or image map accordingly. This technique provides a simple, fast rendering solution for very thin, translucent objects such as leaves or flower petals.

The interface to the left controls the properties of my shader. The user can specify the inner and outer surface colors or image maps, swapping of the textures, and blending value between the two.

The image above depicts the two extremes of swapping/blending textures.

These three images show a gradual blend between the textures. The Panther Lily shader is available here.