Zebra Woven

Zebra Woven is a bespoke upholstery fabric created for Next, developed to faithfully reproduce a real-world woven textile for use across a range of furniture visualisations and product imagery.

The material was created from a physical fabric sample scanned using the XTex textile scanning system, capturing the intricate weave structure, tonal variation, and characteristic zebra-inspired pattern. The raw scan data was then refined in Photoshop, where the artwork was cleaned, colour-balanced, and prepared for seamless tiling while preserving the natural imperfections that give the fabric its authentic appearance.

To ensure accuracy, the pattern was carefully resized to match the real-world texture specifications, allowing it to sit naturally across cushions, arms, and upholstery seams without distortion. Within Maya and Arnold, a custom shader network was developed to recreate the subtle depth and tactile qualities of the woven material, balancing diffuse response, surface roughness, displacement, and fine fabric detail to achieve a realistic result under a variety of lighting conditions.

The final material was designed for production use, providing a physically accurate and highly detailed representation of the original fabric while remaining efficient enough for large-scale furniture visualisation workflows. The accompanying shader setup demonstrates the layered approach used to capture the complexity and richness of the woven surface, ensuring consistency across Next's digital furniture catalogue.