So, here's the French Fromage File :D
Scene file for Max 2015-2018 is attached (Corona 3 hotfix2). Scene uses centimeters, best is to keep it that way.
See attached pics for scene renders - one is a shader-only version, the other one uses additional mold geometry scattered with CScatter. If you don't want to fiddle with the scattered stuff the shader-only version might be enough.
IMPORTANT - You'll need two 3rd party maps for the BlurBeta Plugin Pack - Electric and WaterCell - available in one zip from maxplugins.de. Search for 'BlurBeta' and it should list them, download any of them to get the entire zip file, make sure to visit the subpage that matches your Max version.
Layers and objects:
Cheese Main - our main cheesy hero, can be any geometry but should have round edges so the displacement doesn't freak out. It uses CoronaDisplacement set to 0.8 pixel or so, set it to 3 or so for IR to keep it smooth if you change the displacement map (explained below)
Cheese Mold CScatter - additional mold pieces scattered with CScatter
Cheese Mold Distribution (can be hidden) - the object used for distribution of the mold pieces (useful if you want the pieces only on a certain part of cheese, theCScatter uses its bounding box, not the volume, but we're using the cheese geometry in a distance map to make sure the mold pieces aren't visible where they shouldn't so no problem here)
Cheese Mold Source (can be hidden) - 4 mold pieces that should resemble something like mold crumbs
Shaders (open the classic mat-ed for best overview):
1st Row
Slot 1 - L_Cheese_Complete - CoronaLayerMtl with the main cheese material as base and an additonal layer with the mold as a shader
Slot 2 - Cheese Mold - This is the mold as a shader, applied as a layer on the cheese material. Right now the mask used for this layer is based on noise maps, should you have a 3d scan, it's probably best to create a new mask based on AO or something else. The mask used here will only work fine with the displacement map used on the cheese since it shares a few noise maps.
Slot 3 - Cheese Mold CScatter - This is the material used on the scattered mold pieces. It uses a distance map as a mask for its opacity, with the cheese geometry used as the distance shader. This is a bit finicky and hard to get right. Lots of options here.
Slot 4 and 5 - the mighty French paper flag :D
2nd Row
Slot 1 - Color_Cheese - self explanatory
Slot 2 - Color_Mold_Green - same
Slot 3 - Color_Mold_White - in some places (done with AO) the green mold turns white, sort of a cheap hack but works OK
4th Row
Slot 1 - Cheese displacement - this is super important for the main cheese geometry. It's a composite map with numerous noise maps to drive the displacement. This map has a huge effect on the outcome of the surface imperfections and the mold since the cheese material uses 2 of the maps as mask to show the mold material.
4 of these maps use a mask, which is in...
Slot 2 - MASK_Cut_Surface - This map uses MatIDs of the main cheese geometry to introduce the cut surface. Normal Displacement is ID1 (just white so it doesn't mask anything), cut surface is ID2 - this is a stretched noise that produces the cut stains, color #1 is dark to diminish the displacement, color #2 is brighter to introduce more displacement. If you don't need the surface with the cut stains, either remove this map from the Cheese displacement map where it's used - mentioned above - or delete the map in ID2 and set its color to white.
Lot of stuff is done with AO, CoronaColorCorrect, noises, and a few maps are instanced across shaders and masks... it's probably not really easy to understand but it should be clear if you run IR and enable/disable maps, masks etc.
Make sure you don't change the cheese geometry/displacement mask while the CScatter geometry is visible during IR - it may crash!
Hope it makes sense, ask anytime if you don't see through the mess.
I still don't want to eat it but the challenge was a good one :D
