Some Shader Questions as Falloff Shader, Mix two textures ..

Come here for help & support.
User avatar
Zom-B
1st Place 100
Posts: 4700
Joined: Tue Jul 04, 2006 4:18 pm
Location: ´'`\_(ò_Ó)_/´'`
Contact:

Re: Some Shader Questions as Falloff Shader, Mix two texture

Post by Zom-B » Mon Aug 24, 2015 1:23 am

And another great material I love and a little related to your needs: http://www.indigorenderer.com/materials/materials/1262
polygonmanufaktur.de

User avatar
thesquirell
Posts: 428
Joined: Fri Aug 29, 2014 3:49 am
Location: Novi Sad, Serbia

Re: Some Shader Questions as Falloff Shader, Mix two texture

Post by thesquirell » Mon Aug 24, 2015 2:26 am

Hey, hey, that is some mighty awesome list you got there! I can see those vertex maps working nicely with branch blending from SpeedTree models, as it uses vertex map to blend textures. And much more! And the dirt shader would be a perfect alternative for hand painting material distributions. Even though I heavily enjoy painting dirt and other effects, sometimes it takes too much time, and would be a really nice thing to see.
Silverwing wrote: But sometimes renderers lack those calculations because there are not important enough for the majority of users.
Not with Indigo! Every calculation is taken into the account, even the tiniest bump on your surface, all there to correctly interact with light, and produce physically correct results. For a subtle anistropic effect, sometimes I even go for a 0.1mm bump height!

As for Anisotropic Reflektions / Spec: , is this the effect you are looking for, or is it something else?
Attachments
AnisoSph.jpg
AnisoCyl.jpg

User avatar
Oscar J
1st Place Winner
Posts: 2204
Joined: Sat Mar 31, 2012 3:47 am
Location: Gothenburg, Sweden
3D Software: Blender

Re: Some Shader Questions as Falloff Shader, Mix two texture

Post by Oscar J » Mon Aug 24, 2015 2:59 am

I seem to recall that there was some work done on a proper anisotropic phong, but I can't find the forum thread now for some reason. Would be great to have Ono (developer) straighten a few things out in this thread.

User avatar
Silverwing
Posts: 71
Joined: Sun Aug 23, 2015 1:16 am
Location: Ludwigsburg Germany
Contact:

Re: Some Shader Questions as Falloff Shader, Mix two texture

Post by Silverwing » Wed Aug 26, 2015 7:03 am

Hi thesquirell and thanks for your really nice reply.

I hope you do not get angry with me of I post screenshots of different render engine here:
This is a screenshot from Thea. This feature manages how the materials "exponent" behaves at the grazing angles.
Micro_Roughness_01.jpg
Not with Indigo! Every calculation is taken into the account, even the tiniest bump on your surface, all there to correctly interact with light, and produce physically correct results. For a subtle anistropic effect, sometimes I even go for a 0.1mm bump height!
Oh there is no doubt that Indigo is a really capable renderer.
When I said "But sometimes renderers lack those calculations because there are not important enough for the majority of users" I was not talking about obvious feature that are well integrated into Indigo.
I was talking about features that are not yet implemented in the code.

For example objects bent the light around themselves based on their surface temperature in contrast to the environment temperature. But there is rarely a scene where you would really see that small difference. And compared to the higher render times it will produce its negligible. At least for the majority. If there are a few users that really need to render this effect for their work they will most likely be ignored.

Thats what I was talking about. With the small difference that I was not talking about the surface temperature based distortions but about viewing angle based exponent behaviour.

Also I am aware that in reality anisotropy and the exponent (and the view dependence of the exponent) come from the surface structure and could also be achieved with very detailed bump maps.
In fact I have done that to create the anisotropy of this carbon shader.
Indigo_Mat_Prev_Carbon_01.jpg
But sometimes its more workflow friendly if you can work without extra textures and controll the behaviour inside the shader :-)

And to answer your question. Yes the effect that I can see in your nice renders is the one I am looking for. Correct me if I´m wrong but I´m guessing you have achieved it with a bump map also?
You don´t dream in cryo.

User avatar
thesquirell
Posts: 428
Joined: Fri Aug 29, 2014 3:49 am
Location: Novi Sad, Serbia

Re: Some Shader Questions as Falloff Shader, Mix two texture

Post by thesquirell » Wed Aug 26, 2015 7:47 am

Silverwing wrote: For example objects bent the light around themselves based on their surface temperature in contrast to the environment temperature.
Oh, I love that effect! Not saying that I actually needed it, or ever rendered it! :D

Silverwing wrote: But sometimes its more workflow friendly if you can work without extra textures and controll the behaviour inside the shader
Yes, of course, and time saving too. Shortcuts are always a welcome!
And yes again, the effect is achieved through the use of bump/normal map, with height value of 0.00001m. There is this thing that is most appealing to me in Indigo, and that is that it makes you consider, and understand your surfaces/mediums when wanting to achieve certain effects. I don't know, I guess it's just me, but I love having to actually define my surfaces (model, texture), rather then playing with sliders and guessing the effect. Gives me kinda this feel of certainty that if I define my surface correctly, through modeling or bump/normal maps, it would give me correct results, all across my scene, with consistency, but without the need to slide my way into the correctness, or enable/disable a certain feature. That's just how I feel, of course. I guess I would be the happiest man alive if something like a super computer/reality simulation would happen! And I mean simulation. To the atomic structures. Would help me sleep better at night! :D

P.S
Sorry for asking silly questions, like "is this that" or something similar. Sometimes when a pro asks me something, I always think it's something else then I know of, so, accept my apology again. It's not that I think you don't know about something, and how to achieve certain effects, it's just that I'm questioning myself if I know what's it all about. Kinda selfish of me, yeah. :(
Last edited by thesquirell on Wed Aug 26, 2015 11:26 pm, edited 2 times in total.

User avatar
Oscar J
1st Place Winner
Posts: 2204
Joined: Sat Mar 31, 2012 3:47 am
Location: Gothenburg, Sweden
3D Software: Blender

Re: Some Shader Questions as Falloff Shader, Mix two texture

Post by Oscar J » Wed Aug 26, 2015 8:06 am

Squirrel: you do realise that a Phong material with anything else than perfectly sharp reflection - with low exponent - is also an approximation? The exponent parameter is no different than what anisotropy would be - it's an approximation of the microstructure of the surface. So with your way of reasoning, there should be no exponent setting in Indigo either - instead you'd have to use extremely small scale bump maps to make the reflections look rough.

Of course, this is very impractical. Somewhere we have to draw the line: we have to sacrifice a certain amount of physical accuracy for usability.

User avatar
thesquirell
Posts: 428
Joined: Fri Aug 29, 2014 3:49 am
Location: Novi Sad, Serbia

Re: Some Shader Questions as Falloff Shader, Mix two texture

Post by thesquirell » Wed Aug 26, 2015 8:13 am

Of course, the line must be drawn somewhere.

The topic you are starting has been nibbled here, some time ago:
http://www.indigorenderer.com/forum/vie ... f=5&t=4186

And I must say, I'm on CTZn team! :D
CTZn wrote: Yep. How further to perception of reality belongs to Ono, understand through implementation.
But I don't think it's about whether who's right. It's rather about usability, and if Indigo's team decide to improve it, I'm all about that. But not at the cost of already achieved physical accuracy. Not that I fear that it would happen, just referring to your last sentence. :)
Last edited by thesquirell on Wed Aug 26, 2015 8:23 am, edited 1 time in total.

User avatar
Oscar J
1st Place Winner
Posts: 2204
Joined: Sat Mar 31, 2012 3:47 am
Location: Gothenburg, Sweden
3D Software: Blender

Re: Some Shader Questions as Falloff Shader, Mix two texture

Post by Oscar J » Wed Aug 26, 2015 8:22 am

Sigh. I don't understand why anyone would actually be against a perfectly reasonable feature like that. I mean, even if a new anisotropy feature was introduced, it's not like you can't do it the old way anymore if you want to?

Edit: Sorry, didn't see your edited post.

User avatar
thesquirell
Posts: 428
Joined: Fri Aug 29, 2014 3:49 am
Location: Novi Sad, Serbia

Re: Some Shader Questions as Falloff Shader, Mix two texture

Post by thesquirell » Wed Aug 26, 2015 8:25 am

That's ok, have a kitten.
Attachments
index.jpg
index.jpg (6.54 KiB) Viewed 3505 times

User avatar
Oscar J
1st Place Winner
Posts: 2204
Joined: Sat Mar 31, 2012 3:47 am
Location: Gothenburg, Sweden
3D Software: Blender

Re: Some Shader Questions as Falloff Shader, Mix two texture

Post by Oscar J » Wed Aug 26, 2015 8:27 am

Awwwwwwww. :D

User avatar
Headroom
Indigo 100
Posts: 1058
Joined: Wed Aug 08, 2007 1:07 pm
Location: Spartanburg, SC, USA
Contact:

Re: Some Shader Questions as Falloff Shader, Mix two texture

Post by Headroom » Thu Aug 27, 2015 10:06 am

That is some SICK carbon fiber! Awesome!


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk
iMac 2.93 GHz Quad Core i7. 12 GB memory
ATI Radeon HD 5750M 1024 MB
OS X 10.10.3 Yosemite
Blender 2.72, Blendigo 3.8.25, Indigo 3.8.26

Trippy Lighting LLC - Colorful LED lighting systems
High Power RGB LED driver - Blog

User avatar
Oscar J
1st Place Winner
Posts: 2204
Joined: Sat Mar 31, 2012 3:47 am
Location: Gothenburg, Sweden
3D Software: Blender

Re: Some Shader Questions as Falloff Shader, Mix two texture

Post by Oscar J » Thu Aug 27, 2015 10:21 am

Yup. Dunno whether it's better than the one we've got though. Did you use textures for it Silverwing, or is it procedural?

User avatar
Silverwing
Posts: 71
Joined: Sun Aug 23, 2015 1:16 am
Location: Ludwigsburg Germany
Contact:

Re: Some Shader Questions as Falloff Shader, Mix two texture

Post by Silverwing » Fri Aug 28, 2015 1:51 am

Hi there.

I´m glad this thread had not caused a fight.

I can very well understand thesquirell´s position here. If we had unlimited resources rendering on atomic level of detail would definitely the thing to do. It would give the most realistic results and it would be awesome.

Indigo seems to be really good with bump / normals i noticed and you can really go much further as in many other renderer "designing" the required surface structure with textures.

But I´m on Oscar J´s site when it comes to artistic freedom and workflow decisions (ease of use) I think there a renderer should not restrict users to a specific workflow. Even if it might be more realistic. I think keeping in mind that the tool need to be efficient to work with should also be a goal on the roadmap.

This algorithms are telling the rays what to do when hitting the object. If the area is smaller then a pixel you do not see the difference if the rays are bent because of a bump or because of an algorithm that told them so (neglecting the fact, that behind bump there is an algorithm too that alters the surface normal that therefore alters the outgoing trajectory of the rays.)

I´m not saying one should choose one over the other method or to even get rid of one method in the renderer. I think the best would be to have both possibilities in there and the user can choose what works best for him.

@ Headroom:
That is some SICK carbon fiber! Awesome!
Thanks a lot!

@ Oscar J:
Yup. Dunno whether it's better than the one we've got though. Did you use textures for it Silverwing, or is it procedural?
It uses textures. It if roughly the same as real carbon would be built. The base layer is made of an Phong with a carbon strands texture. I used a fine bump map of the strands to get the directional anisotropy effect. Above that there is a clear coating layer sealing the fibers.

As always thanks a lot for your feedback! You´re awesome!

Cheers,
Raphael
You don´t dream in cryo.

User avatar
thesquirell
Posts: 428
Joined: Fri Aug 29, 2014 3:49 am
Location: Novi Sad, Serbia

Re: Some Shader Questions as Falloff Shader, Mix two texture

Post by thesquirell » Fri Aug 28, 2015 2:25 am

Silverwing wrote: I´m glad this thread had not caused a fight.
Why would it, we are on the same page here! More control, more insights, more knowledge! :D
Silverwing wrote: I´m not saying one should choose one over the other method or to even get rid of one method in the renderer. I think the best would be to have both possibilities in there and the user can choose what works best for him.
Absolutely! Already achieved levels of realism should be preserved, but if someone is in the need of something faster, for example caustics, or subsurface scattering, they should have an option for that, as well. That's why we are getting the new FastSSS material type with the new Indigo 4, and Photon Mapping as an option for (I guess) all render modes. Keep those mats coming, and don't forget to upload some to Mat Library, if you feel charitable! :D

User avatar
Oscar J
1st Place Winner
Posts: 2204
Joined: Sat Mar 31, 2012 3:47 am
Location: Gothenburg, Sweden
3D Software: Blender

Re: Some Shader Questions as Falloff Shader, Mix two texture

Post by Oscar J » Fri Aug 28, 2015 8:37 am

Silverwing: quality post as per usual!

If you haven't seen this material already: http://www.indigorenderer.com/materials/materials/1298

Pretty much like what you described, but procedural instead. Probably my favourite Indigo material. :)

Post Reply
33 posts

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 4 guests