mia_material VS blinn ...

[Kel Solaar]

mia_material is much more advanced than blinn and offer some functionnality you will not find in the blinn, one of them for example is the Oren Nayar Like Diffuse Component whereas on a Blinn it's a Lambertian one. I could enumerate but it's really obvious when you compare the 2 shaders in the Attribute Editor.

KS

[ErixGraphix]

if i'm not wrong the Oren Nayar diffuse effect is a way to simulate powdery surface, and with some tweaking on a blinn (based on facing ratio) i think you can get the same result...
You can get many of the mia_material effect with a blinn (like BRDF with facing ratio too), and that's why the choice between these two shader become difficult...
Does a huge shading network based on a blinn (with the aim to reproduce physical effects) is better than a mia_material?

[djx]

If your past experience is with blinn then you will probably find it more comfortable than mia. However if you are prepared to learn a new shader (and it does take some time to get used to) you will get better results with less effort with mia.

I would say, start out using mia for everything (except skin). If it does not work out you can always fall back to blinn.

-- David

[ErixGraphix]

Thanks for your interrest, but i'm as comportable with each one.
The problem is that i never used them for a whole production, just for still images or short sequences.
The reason i'm wonder which one is the best to use is that i'm gonna work a whole year on a movie ( last year school movie) so i want to be sure of the render workflow I'll choose.
But reading your post, DJX, with a good mastering level of each shaders, it's better to choose mia_material?

[Kel Solaar]

if i'm not wrong the Oren Nayar diffuse effect is a way to simulate powdery surface, and with some tweaking on a blinn (based on facing ratio) i think you can get the same result...
Oren Nayar simulate Rough Surfaces and Micro Facetting, and is really good for Skin Diffuse Component for example. You can approximate something close but a true Oren Nayar will always react better to Lighting than a Simple Facing Ratio Trick.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oren%E2%80%93Nayar_Reflectance_Model

You can get many of the mia_material effect with a blinn (like BRDF with facing ratio too), and that's why the choice between these two shader become difficult...
Yeah but the Soft Reflections of the Mia have a lot of controls and optimisations you don't have with a Blinn.

Does a huge shading network based on a blinn (with the aim to reproduce physical effects) is better than a mia_material?
I think that a Monolitic Shader will always be faster to tweak than a huge network, and it's easier to share settings. After all it depends of what you wanna do and it's a matter of taste. A true thing btw is that the more nodes you have the larger your scene will be, and the longer it will be to process. When you are shading an object it's ok but when you start to have 100 or 250 different pieces with a huge Shading Network for each one, you will certainly prefer the Monolitic approach :D


If your past experience is with blinn then you will probably find it more comfortable than mia. However if you are prepared to learn a new shader (and it does take some time to get used to) you will get better results with less effort with mia.

I would say, start out using mia for everything (except skin). If it does not work out you can always fall back to blinn.

-- David

I would do the same :)

KS

[ErixGraphix]

Thanks Kel Solaar!
effectively a monolitic shader is a good thing, especially when you have an heavy scene.
My question was based on the fact that I always heard that blinn is mostly used in production, but as you said, sometimes it's a huge task to recreate mia effects with a huge shading network.
So i wondered if it's worse to spend time to recreate mia with blinn, if finally there's no differencies in render time or compositing possibilities...

[Kel Solaar]

Tbh I think I never used a blinn again since Zap introduced the mia_material except for some rapid tests where it's easier for me to create a blinn because there is a shortcut it in the shelf :D

KS

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