Material conversion

[Nikolaj Knudsen]

Hi all
Does anyone know how the material converter actually works on phong materials? what is passed where?
I use the convert materials a lot since our models usually are made in Archicad were we have all materials set up in a library. From there to c4d and Indigo.

So:
transparent channel-->specular IR and color goes to internal medium
color without specular and reflection --> diffuse
bump seems fine on all materials
alpha inverts from c4d (could be nice with a invert back tick)
luminance --> emitter (always need some work anyway)

Phong
Sometimes I get a IOR at 1 sometimes 11?
exponents from 1000 - 100000

I've tried all sorts of combinations with reflection and specular channel (R16 - both goes in the reflection channel as Legacy modes)

Can anyone share some light in the dark?

Cheers Nik

[thesquirell]

I am not going to be very helpful with this, since everytime someone asks me for an advice on how to work with any rendering engine, I say to them: "Learn that renderer's language". In this case, Indigo material language. When using a specific renderer, it is always better to reconstruct every material and adapt it to it's specific system. That way we can understand renderer better, and achive better results. It is usually the case, sadly, that a magical "push the button" solution never works out.

[Nikolaj Knudsen]

I am trying to get the best workflow between 3 programs. My issue was how the converter works. I know how to set up a material - That is what I do now every time I convert a model
I have 500+ materials in AC fit for everything else we do. Rendering is not the only output in architecture
I'm trying to work backward from Indigo to get the least time consuming setup.

Nik

[thesquirell]

I know the pain, but I choose to carry it! xD
Would love to hear the smoothest pipeline available, but I guess it is just a personal preference. When having that much ammount of material I can only imagine how bumming that feels. On the converter side, I too, am having trouble understanding it, especially after importing .fbx from SpeedTree. Why does it convert the channels the way it is, etc., but after a few tries I just kinda quit, and go all the way into Indigo Material.
On the time consuming part, well, you can always hire me to do it...I'm just kinda looking how to get out the country I live,so, will work for food, basically.

[Nikolaj Knudsen]

hmm.. I think the new reflection channel is part of the confusion. I can't get it to convert to phong material from new R16 materials. Somehow the AC exported materials works. The converter pick up the reflection brightness set in AC and translate it to IOR but the brightness value is locked after that. Exponent convert to 100000.

[Patrice]

Hi,
(excuse my bad english ...)
I have the same workflow, in architectural vizualisation (Archicad > C4D >Indigo)
I still working with C4D R15, just because of the new reflection channel of R16.

I think the best way is to :
- make a c4d reference file (empty) with all your materials, but ready to use in Indigo and save it
- materials must have the same names in this file as in the export file from Archicad
- open your export from Archicad
- go to Material manager > Function > Material exchanger
- choose your C4D refernce file

You can choose to replace all or some of your materials

[Nikolaj Knudsen]

Thanks for the suggestion Patrice - I'll try it out

[Nikolaj Knudsen]

Thanks again Patrice.
It works can't believe I haven't figured that out before. With a little work this will be a one button fix after all.