Gradients

[Per-Anders]

The trouble you're facing is fortunately simply one of terminology rather than a missing feature (in fact cinema gradients are rather nicer than lightwaves which aren't even animateable!), in Cinema the various gradients are split up into many different shaders, colorizer for instance uses any other shader combination to control it's gradient, fresnel and falloff allow you to set fresnel incidence angles and directions (which you may want to use in this case), the spectral is based on illumination and lighting, the cell shader in the sketch & toon module adds a bunch of other gradient controls for light controlled effects, and it's easy enough to set driven/driver with for instance falloffs if you just want a single objects direction to control a gradient falloff for instance, it would be easier if you had the link to the tutorial then people could help translate it for you.


Your best bet is to spend time learning to use the various shaders in C4D to the point where you feel you feel comfortable wiht the system and with what each shader does, because while you'll always find roughly the same shaders in general terms between apps the material workflow and terminology is generall is drastically different between most apps, and until you understand the shaders in the app you're working in you wont be able to translate effects accross easily from other applications.

[bhealy27]

Per-Anders,

Thanks for your help. You're right, I'm sure a lot of it does have to do with terminology and my lack of a deep understanding of C4Ds shaders. Since reading your message I've spent the last hour or so looking through various C4D shaders and I still haven't found one that seems to fit.

What I'm trying to do is apply a gradient to an object and have the color of the object change to various colors within that gradient based on the incidence angle of a specific light. I know I'm going to look really dumb when someone points out a really obvious oversight on my part but I can't seem to find a shader that looks to the incidence angle of a specific light and modifies color based on that.

[MJV]

Sketch & Toon's Cell shader does exactly this. It even has a light inclusion/exclusion input. Unfortunately Cinema doesn't come standard with this shader, and the shader itself is missing some of the nice functions of the otherwise less capable gradient shader which does come with Cinema. So you haven't really overlooked anything. You have to buy S&T if you want this shader.

[vid2k2]

Some experiments

-used a fractal to reflect rather than the LW method of generating the patterns

[bhealy27]

Michael, thanks for the pointers on Sketch and Toon. I do have the module and will have to check it out further.

David, neat fractals.

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