M-Forgeless

#2

Thatā€™s pretty slick! Whatā€™s the trick, if you donā€™t mind sharing?

Ryan

#3

Sure I can share!
I am using the gradient shader set to ā€œview edgeā€ in combination with the anisotropic shader. Two colors come from the gradient shader, and one from the anisotropic.

If anyone tries this, or figures out another method, please post your results!

#4

Dave, any chance you can make your movies viewable to people who donā€™t or canā€™t get to QT 7.

Donā€™t mean to be a pain in the buttā€¦ I just canā€™t justify the expense to upgrade my home machine, Mac G4/400/OS 10.2.8, at the moment. The QT 7/iTunes download from Apple causes to many of hassles on my employers Dell machine config and is basically against company policy to install it.

Iā€™m starting to feel like the Lowest Common Denominator.

Thanks,

Mike

#5

That is indeed very cool. Thanks very much!

#6

Very nice indeed!

#7

Mike,
you are in good company :wink:
Someone else needed something for an earlier version too.

Try this (compressed with Sorenson 2) it should work. I donā€™t have QT 6 to test with.

www.arketypedesign.com/Multi-PaintSpin2.mov

Also, here is a JPEG Just in Case.

www.arketypedesign.com/Multi-PaintBig.jpg

If anyone experiments with this please post your experience/ results.

#8

Yeahhhhh, very cool.

I use this technique when ever I get MForge nosebleeds - this happens to me if I ever need a material that isnā€™t a preset :slight_smile:

MForge is spectacular, but I swear that shader should have a ā€˜sandbox modeā€™ with only the simple controls, or at least a hierarchy of complexity (so the more advanced stuff is hidden and revealed with a click).

Sorry for flying OT there :wink:
Good work Dave !
Ian

#9

Thanks Ian. :slight_smile:
I would love to see your technique with this if you care to share!

#10

Hi Dave,

Thanks for updating the the quicktime movie and telling us how you used the shaders.
I hope to do some very simple experiments with this over the weekend.

~Mike

#11

Mike,
Looking forward to seeing your tests!

#12

Hi Dave,

I did do some experimentation with the gradient and anistropic shaders but I donā€™t quite understand how they work yet so Iā€™m still experimenting/exploring/learning the material/shader ropesā€¦ oh and add in some lighting learning to that too.

ā€¦I did notice your post on the material libraryā€¦ the examples at the EIAS forum are quite clear, and the scale of the shading is goodā€¦ I think that may be one of the issues Iā€™m having with my experimentationā€¦ I think I have a disconnect with the shader settings and the scale of the spheres and block Iā€™m usingā€¦

Would it be ok if I worked these issues in this thread or would it be better to start a new one? I do have a lot to learn on these issues and my time with EIAS is spread pretty thin so it could take a little while to work throughā€¦

Thanks,

~Mike

#13

Hi Mike,
I think this forum is an appropriate place to discuss this technique.

Please let me know if you have any specific questions on the setup for this effect, or post links to images if you have some work-in-progress samples we can talk about.

As you pointed out, the lighting is half of the material equation.
I have had very good results by placing a single radial light at about 60% intensity at about 45 degrees to one side and above an object (sphere) resting on a flat plane. Then turn on GI, and set primary rays to 50, secondary to 0, enable skylight On, at about 60%.
Then tweak it a bit to taste.

Dave

#14

Hi Dave,

Iā€™ve been putting a little bit of time in on this in the early am, late pm and sometimes lunch at work. Iā€™ll emphasize ā€œa little bit of timeā€, Iā€™ve spread my art dabbling time a little to thin among to many art ideas, concepts and projects.

Iā€™ve posted an image of where Iā€™m at. Iā€™ve basically been exploring how the shaders work with light and trying to understand them. So I made a gradient model, anisotropic model and will make a third model to show them combined.

From what Iā€™ve explored so far, both of these shaders seem directly dependent on the light source for how they appear. I was assuming they would become the overall material, but my images show otherwise. Iā€™ll be changing the model diffuse color to work better with the shaders.

Iā€™m using Light rig, a radiall light, EIAS modeler 5, EIAS 5.5.3, I also downloaded the EIAS 6.6.x demo here at work for lunch time experiements. My Dell M70 laptop at work blows the socks of my G4/400 for render timesā€¦

Well on to other thingsā€¦ Thanks,

Mike

#15

Hey Mike-
Thanks for the e-mail.

I think you are headed in the right direction!

A couple of tips for moving forwardā€¦
Just select the Anisitropic shader you have on object two, copy and paste ā€œon topā€ of the Gradient shader on object one (both in the diffuse channel) so both are active on the same object. You should try increasing the intensity of the anisotropic for a bit for more contrast.

Also, try some crazy color combinations. Maybe color the object yellow or green, keeping the blue gradient, and maybe an orage-ish anisotropic. Experiment and have fun!

Light Rig is great, but I really canā€™t say enough about how great GI is in 6.5. If you get the cash together it is a worthy upgrade. (I am sure itā€™s tough on ā€œhobbyistā€ users.)

Post again when you have some more previews!

#16

I think the idea of having M-forgeless materials is pretty cool. I tried for this thread to expirement with metal flake settings. For my image i used my metal material and set in the diffuse channel the marble shader, with 12 colors and changed the settings from Density, Frequency and Turbulence to 10. As reference for the colors i used the ā€œ3D Logoā€ from PaulĀ“s gallery. Since i have no MForge i could not do a 1 to 1 comparison of the look.
It would be nice if someone could test MForge with HansĀ“ cgsphere file, to see the difference, if this is not to much work.

What do you think, does my test material looks believeable, since i have no real Metal Flake referenceā€¦?


#17

Iā€™ve been working on this tooā€¦

try putting the ā€œnormalā€ shader in the specularity channel and set the blend mode
to "Luminosity ". Make sure you have a good spread specular setting on, so that the
color will show up on the curving part of the model.

Funny how random people are working on things simultaneouslyā€¦

#18

Is this a generic scene file that I could use?
I would like to apply my material to the scene you are using.
let me know,
thanks
Mike Fitz
www.3dartz.com

#19

Hi Mike,

thanks for your suggestions, i will try them out! The scene file is from Hans Groothuis. You can find it at www.cgsphere.com. I use it regularly because it gives very good lighting IMO. The only thing that i added is the reflection map.

Hope we can see more folks participating in a solution :slight_smile:

Regards
Stefan

#20

Hey Stefan,

thanks for the link.
Um, where did you get the reflection map? or is it your own?

Mike

#21

ItĀ“s a demo file (watermarked at the bottom) from Sachform Technology.
You can find it here: http://www.sachform.de/download_DE.html
(the second image)

Regards
Stefan