Materials goodness

BbB · Post by **BbB** » Wed Mar 28, 2007 7:27 pm

You're probably aware of this, but I was browsing through Maxwell's free materials library the other and it's a real goldmine. Many cannot be replicated in Indigo (yet) as they use complex blending, transparency settings, specular and normal maps, but with a bit of tweaking, there's a lot to be done with these. Here a quick test with some old scratched glass, scratched chrome, rusty metal, orange peel, browny cake and brocade.

mrCarnivore · Post by **mrCarnivore** » Wed Mar 28, 2007 8:16 pm

Nice materials!

Did you have to do a lot of work and try/error to convert those materials or did you just use the settings that work in indigo and that render was produced without much tweaking necessary?
Are the materials in that library textured? How did you uv-map the sphere?

Afaik specular maps are possible in indigo if you blend two identical phong materials with different exponent settings...

joegiampaoli · Post by **joegiampaoli** » Wed Mar 28, 2007 8:17 pm

I don't know why but I feel we should kinda stop looking over our shoulders at the Maxwell site, I know some of you (even I do it myself sometimes) go in there and see what's new, but I think posting and comparing indigo with maxwell is kinda, well you know... not very professional, I mean we are Indigo here and they are Maxwell there, yeah I know there are some cool materials at their site and stuff, but I believe we are capable of creating ours with our own taste and knowledge. It's like the material preview scene, trying to create something sort of like the "looks of Maxwell", I don't mean to insult any one, PLEASE don't reply telling me to jerk off or jump off a cliff or something, I know some of you are probably typing a "quickie" by now to tell me how wrong I am and that this forum is free to discuss whatever you feel like it, and yes you are right, this forum is to discuss almost anything, but I just wish it could kinda stick more in a professional manner without saying things like "OOhhh look at what the Maxwell forum has" "Maybe we should do the same here, what to you think Nick?, can you do this so indigo looks more like Maxwell?" I just think Indigo is Indigo and Maxwell is Maxwell.....

F*ck!!! I can see the replies by now.....

mrCarnivore · Post by **mrCarnivore** » Wed Mar 28, 2007 8:33 pm

Jump of a cliff!!

scnr

Seriously, I think would shouldn't try to compare everthing but I see no harm in getting inspiration in the sense of good materials from maxwell (or any other comparable render-engine)...
After all there is no difference if you come up with almost the same settings after hours or days of experimenting, that you could also just have looked up in the maxwell material library!

What I see harmful is when somebody says: Maxwell does it / has it and therefore it has to be right! And the Maxwell materials are perfect and cannot be improved...

joegiampaoli · Post by **joegiampaoli** » Wed Mar 28, 2007 8:38 pm

mrCarnivore wrote:Jump of a cliff!!

scnr

That's cool, I'm just waiting for the strong ones, like "Go flush your head in the toilet...."

suvakas · Post by **suvakas** » Wed Mar 28, 2007 8:39 pm

Here is my point of view...

I think it is not so black and white. There could be different reasons why people use Indigo. For me it is not so about "keeping it Indigo", but more about the images i can produce with the tools available. If there is a tool available (let it be this maxwell library for now) that i can use in my work, then i will use it. I do 3D. As simple as that.
Also comparing Maxigo and Indigo is not so wrong cause they are comparable in so many levels and Maxwell is the most famous unbiased renderer. So i totally get why the name Maxwell comes around so offten.

Suvakas

joegiampaoli · Post by **joegiampaoli** » Wed Mar 28, 2007 8:45 pm

Yes I understand, actually I am not telling anyone not to use Maxwell materials, or get external ideas or any other software library, I mean we all do it, anyone is free to use whatever the hell they feel like it to achieve a final satisfying rendering it's just about the posting about it which I don't think it's that professional, shows a "let's copy this" kinda thing....

Damn it, I hope I didn't start one of those hate threads....

BbB · Post by **BbB** » Wed Mar 28, 2007 8:56 pm

Carnivore: Yes, there's quite a bit of tweaking there. What you get from their library are the raw mats, i.e. the textures. Everything else, shaders, adjusting the exponent of the textures, material definitions, you have to do by hand. As I said, there is also a lot that cannot be replicated, mostly to do with blended mats and textured SSS, blending of materials and emitters, etc. Likewise, not all the materials there are textured. Some are purely procedural and therefore useless to us. On the spheres, they are not perfectly UV-mapped, hence the ridge at the equator. I'm stupid, I know, but I haven't yet managed to apply a flat texture to a sphere convincingly.

Joe: I agree with you about the silliness of comparing a free software with one that costs a thousand dollars. However, look at the Maxwell forums and you'll see there are quite a few bitter voices about all the great things Indigo does and the speed at which it is being developed. We all make economic decisions and, as things stand, Maxwell is not good enough for me to fork out the difference, at least telling from their gallery since I haven't used it. I see they have some advanced materials and shading options we don't have, but as far as image quality and speed are concerned, my subjective feeling is that they are very much neck-to-neck.
Having said that, the Maxwell community has a very lively materials exchange, with a lot of very good, professional stuff, and therefore I'm using it. Simple as that. The other thing I would say is that I think it's part of Indigo's open-spirit culture to just browse around and play with whatever free resources are available. You can only get better by measuring yourself against what others do. Think of it as some kind of benchmarking.

BbB · Post by **BbB** » Wed Mar 28, 2007 9:56 pm

A few other examples (tin foil, a heavily tweaked turquoise enamel, leather and ivory). I've redone the rust ball to mimick a specular map by blending a diffuse and a phong material. There's a serious limitation there because of the impossibility to use bump maps with blend materials (although I know Ono is working on this).

suvakas · Post by **suvakas** » Wed Mar 28, 2007 10:02 pm

foil is cool. Maby a bit too grey, but still great.

BbB · Post by **BbB** » Wed Mar 28, 2007 10:31 pm

Yeah, I suspect it's the reflection from the dark background. I might re-render it with an environment map.

Stur · Post by **Stur** » Wed Mar 28, 2007 11:29 pm

Great materials.
I have a little question off-topic though : could you tell us where you found the "wallpaper" texture on the plane, plz ? I'm looking for good wallpapers textures, I'm too lazy to draw one by myself

BbB · Post by **BbB** » Wed Mar 28, 2007 11:56 pm

There you go with a nice environment map.

Stur: The wallpaper comes from the Maxwell library. Have a look, there are dozens.

mrCarnivore · Post by **mrCarnivore** » Wed Mar 28, 2007 11:59 pm

Looks better but the foil should be a little more dull, I think.

Kram1032 · Post by **Kram1032** » Thu Mar 29, 2007 12:02 am

That's aluminium foil, right?
Should be quite easy to set it up... al.nk... correct exponent.... good bump.... done...
Maybe, you should do an own test with a folded peace of foil...
It would be much easier to texture...

Materials goodness

Materials goodness

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