Shade yourself (a self help group)

[Eddoron]

In CG, many limitations can be circumvented and there's at least one way to do it. Even more according to my experience.
We have a lot of bright minds in this forum who can help with all sorts of problems.

This thread is dedicated to solving, circumventing problems and creating useful contributions to the community.
There are a lot of features to come but some can't wait. Let's help to keep the community productive and provide them with some useful creations until things like the Hair shader etc. are implemented and reduce the stress on the developers.

Can't start without a contribution, so here's my attempt at a car "shader". A layered shader, driven by xpresso.
I tried to keep everything procedural and not too slow to compute while giving the user an easy to use menu.
Looked at other engine's shaders for inspiration.
Since we can't mix materials in the layer shader with only certain channels active, the diffuse channel was copied, so it wouldn't appear black
I used the tiles shader(random - Voronoi like appearance) for the flakes with some light "normal" looking colors and some filters and expressions to control everything from outside the material.
It sure can be improved and I'd love to hear suggestions on how to make it better. (I have no clue about programming, so I used what I know)
It's more of an artistic material but with the right settings, there should be some nice results. (Latest Beta build)

Known problems:
-Objects in the viewport becoming invisible -fix: recalculate materials
-Material sometimes not updating in IR -fix: Restart IR (previous build worked fine, now needs restart to refresh materials)

My next attempt will be a hair shader for flat and rounded geometry(a switch)
 

I hope you like it and I 'd love to see your contributions!

[Beanzvision]

Good job man!

[Eddoron]

Thank you very much. If you have suggestions, I'm all open.
I've just had a look at the roadmap and saw that the triplanar shader is in dev.
So here's my first 5-minute attempt using the projector shaders (planar projection at various degrees)and fall-off shaders as masks.

I have no clue how good this is going to work but that might be the next thing.(If it's a viable solution)
I'll have another look at that after my Black Mirror marathon.

edit: a six-sided one (with different textures) is possible but slows down way too much.

[Eddoron]

I'm a bit unsure about some things and maybe someone can help.
I'm working on my hair "shader" and since Arnold seems to have an easy to use interface, I decided to go that route.
However, I'm not completely sure about the following:
-The melanin slider.  Is it a gradient from white to black with some colors in the middle, almost like a temperature gradient?

Melanin

The Melanin parameter is used to generate natural hair colors, by controlling the amount of melanin in hair. Colors will range from blonde around 0.2 to red and brown around 0.5, to black at 1.0. To control the hair color with a texture map, set melanin to 0 and use base color instead.

-The specular shift.  A second anisotropic layer? Not sure how to shift it if it's not anisotropic.

Shift

The angle of scales on the hair fiber, shifting the primary and secondary specular reflections away from the perfect mirror direction. For realistic results for human hair, a small angle between 0° and 10° should be used (values for animal fur may be different).

Btw, here's the current state:
Color randomness is driven by the variation shader and a gradient. The hair is polygonal of course, 4-sided but without phong restriction.
2 Reflection layers.

[Eddoron]

So...as far as I know, the shift comes from the hairs' scales.
I made a color gradient with a small 5% brightness change, doubled and doubled it, over and over, then put it into the c4d normalizer shader and that one into the projector for tiling and that one into the CRN normal shader. The result is an anisotropic effect, though it's a bit different than the usual one and is visible at high glossiness created through the bump.
Also renders much faster than my previous attempts.

I'm still looking for a better pattern/ noise, it just has to be a vertical fall-off. kinda like the displacement of roof tiles, though I can't use bitmaps I want to keep it fully procedural.

I just hope that I'm on the right track. I'm really not sure about this one. Not even sure which layer to apply that one.
Opinions from hair(-scales) experts much appreciated. :D

[Eddoron]

Hey Guys, this is not just a goodies thread. You can post all your ideas and problems concerning materials/shaders in here.

BTW, the hair material is kinda working. The problem is the reliance on polygonal geometry which makes the whole thing just way too slow to render, for my taste. so it might be discarded or at least put on hold until I've found a solution.

Today I had an idea and started working on a CRT effect material. Everything in one material. Input images are split into RGB and each channel masked with a pattern. Still working on the optional noise.
But you can have a look here:



I hope to release it soon. Maybe Monday.

[Eddoron]

Picked up my hair "shader" again.
I did lots and lots of test renders trying to get the specular shift "right"... No layer shader this time!
Making it look correct on different types of geometry turned out to be harder than expected and I decided to build in different modes for the spec attributes.
Also added support for the C4D hair shader as another mode.
Still trying to implement a well working Melanin color slider but the many switches make my head spin.


Any idea what else to add? Nothing to fancy...still not a programmer.

The current state of working features:

[Eddoron]

Here's my first version of my Hair "Shader".

I hope you like it. Info on usage etc. is inside the scene file.

Updated to 1.2

please go to this thread for further updates.

[Beanzvision]

I'm keen to give this one a try, it looks like a lot of fun. Kudos for your hard work. ;)

[Eddoron]

Thanks, I did a lot of renders trying to get the spec highlight shift right.(or close to...)

BTW, here's my CRT screen:

Download here

Known bug: -The input image creates 2 copies of itself when exported w/ assets but behaves normally in regular use. So don't mind the copies in the tex folder in the download.

[Eddoron]

Hey guys, I made a cool new HDRI map of my last trip to the mountains before the snow would melt.
I've used a stage object in the preview, so the resulting image could look a bit different.

Here's a preview:

Try it and tell me if you would like a whole pack of those.

[Eddoron]

Hair shader updated to 1.2

• Added Opacity fall-off (currently spline controlled, might change completely in later version)
• Minor fixes + more support of C4D's hair shader

please go to this dedicated thread for further updates.

I'd rather keep everything in one place than spreading it all over the forums and having to update the posts in each thread.

[Beanzvision]

Hey guys, I made a cool new HDRI map of my last trip to the mountains before the snow would melt.
I've used a stage object in the preview, so the resulting image could look a bit different.

Here's a preview:

Try it and tell me if you would like a whole pack of those.

I see what you did there!!!! lololol

[Eddoron]

;-)

Anyway, how's your sex life?

[Beanzvision]

Much better now! ;)