Process of creating a material

[itsallgoode9]

I personally create my bump map as the very first step and work through the other layers....spec, reflect, diffuse etc. and ending with the color......the reason why is because when you put the color map 1st it really covers up the details of the other maps and makes it hard to tell exactlly what is going on with the surface......especially with the bump........doing it like this makes sure that you have the material reacting with light the way it should, which is what defines the surface . After I have all of them together I go through and tweak everything to get it looking perfect. I don't know if anybody else works like this, this is just a method that I have came up myself and works pretty well for me.

[Fre]

Thnx for the tip !
really usefull.

Now what about testing the material with different light setups ?
Do you make a material & test it with a higher brightness value of the light & a lower one ?
If you want to render your final image with hdri, do you immidiatly test render in hdri ?
or first take a simple lightsetup ?

[itsallgoode9]

with the lighting setups I set up my lights how I want with a default grey lambert marterial on all the surfaces then I put my textures on, then I tweak the intensities to work with the textures....as well, this is when I tint the colors of the light too...........i'm working in maya, and during this step I raise or lower the diffuse channel of the textures during this step so that the textures are all the same intensities under the lights............as for the hdri and global illumination stuff, I have, thus far, just worked directly under the hdri setup without using a light setup first.......this is just because I am pretty new to the hdri and global illumination in actual production usage and it makes me feel more comfortable being able to see the results as they will be in the end and not having to estimate the end result.

[leigh]

I usually set up my lighting and basic shading before creating any textures. Since lighting is essentially the most critical element for photorealism, it's imperative to concentrate on setting it up correctly, along with your surfaces shading parameters, and having textures on your model tends to distract from this.
You should also set up the basic shading before adding textures for the same reason. Ideally you should have your surface looking mostly realistic without any textures, as it is the shading that determines the quality of the substance of your surface. Textures should only be there to add detail to the surface that the shading cannot create.

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