Microscopic shader - STILL can't get it right.

[Libor]

Hi!

Well I dont give exact recipe but things which I would use in my shader tree would be probably one or combination of these>

- Lambert shader as a base (no highlights at all)

- Sampler info node (conected to Ramp and then to some color channel like Incadescence/ambient etc)

- mib_Ambient_Occlusion node (to ambient or any other color input in lamber shader) maybe trying different settings of it like swap light/shadow colors to see what happens


Last but not least, as I can see from reference photos there are also some sort of light dependecy which means scene could be lit by some directlight and the shader could benefit from light direction ideally

Hope this help a bit....

Cheers!

[txty]

plug ambient occlusion shader into any shader or use any shader with built in ambient occlusion (like mia material or p_megaTK), then plug facing ratio texture (p_facing_ratio or JS facing ratio) inside ambient occlusion's ambient light color
facing ratio must be tuned so brighter color on the edges and darker in the center

works fine in most cases
my own example
http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1102/3173726245_ef84c3375b.jpg?v=0

note that realism of the thing highly depends of the object itself
i mean, you need a lot of good texturing with tiny details and displacement

[acidream]

It also seems like there is some subsurface scattering happening, especially in the second reference photo.

[Theodocious]

if this were me, I'd use mental ray

Mia_x material with heavy, dark ambient occlusion, and honestly to get quick SSS effect give the shader a little transparency, then turn on full translucency, which converts the refraction into an internal glow. then I would make some very high resolution bump maps and actually this seems like an ideal shader for physical displacement, which is pretty easy and looks great in MR. You'd also want use global illumination for the fine details in the cracks. really crank up the AA sampling as well

Lighting and shadows are very important for that look and to capture details, the problem with your first image is that it looks very flat, and actually over-composited. just use a single spotlight with raytraced shadows, emitting photons, and it will instantly look better. get the camera in closer, and a tiny bit of dof will make the microscope more convincing

[Halogen]

Hi All,

Thanks for all the replies!! Really do appreciate it. Thought I'd respond when I actually got around to giving the ideas a try. So I've tried to follow the suggestions, using the facing ratio node, AO, and SSS...

Obviously I haven't played with DOF yet, will most likely do that in post with a depth map. The base for this shader was a velvet texture with two different rock texture nodes, one controlling lighter colour and one controlling darker colour. Facing ratio plugged into a ramp (using the rock texture nodes as brighter and darker), plugged into the colour attribute on the lambert. The AO is plugged into the ambient slot. I'm having trouble with getting the SSS look to the render, which I think is probably crucial to getting a more accurate render. I've tried putting translucence to 1 and making it slightly transparent, but it seems to just add a LOT to the render time without having much effect. I thought about plugging in a fast_sss shader into a slot, but not sure which one to use, incandescence blows out the scene way too much...

My next step would be to add a slight bump map to get more texture look to the models, but currently the noise from the rock textures and AO is helping that problem a little.

I'm open to critiques, and suggestions and sample files to make this look better. I'm still not a point where i'm 100% happy with it, but its a good start. Its a real challenge getting my head around the hypershade, what should go where, and by what nodes to use...

http://www.jarradgittos.com/workFiles/cells_WIP_02.jpg


Here is a link to the shader - without models (too large with models):
http://www.jarradgittos.com/workFiles/cell3Dshader.ma


Thanks for the help look forward to progressing the shader!

[wizlon]

Here's a real quick test scene/shader I just did, you could adapt and refine to suit your job.

[Halogen]

Thanks for that wizlon, looks like a really interesting shader, will have to get my head around it and have a look exactly what you did. I'll play around with it a little later today, thanks a heap mate :bowdown:

[royg]

Here's a real quick test scene/shader I just did, you could adapt and refine to suit your job.Sorry to bump this thread from so long ago, but the file you posted is looking for a lightMap in: "\Users\lwilson\Desktop\lightmap" (the mentalRayTexture node) - thus the render looks nothing like the one you posted... what's the usual way of generating a new lightmap?

[coccosoids]

works fine in most cases
my own example
http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1102/3173726245_ef84c3375b.jpg?v=0

note that realism of the thing highly depends of the object itself
i mean, you need a lot of good texturing with tiny details and displacement

:argh: How did you model those?!

[txty]

:argh: How did you model those?!

xenodream(http://www.xenodream.com) > obj file imported into maya

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