Is there a Blender node in Shader Mixer? Answer: the Mix brick

KeryaKerya Posts: 10,943
edited February 2013 in Daz Studio Discussion

OK, the title says it all ...

But for those not knowing Poser, but DazStudio:
The Blender node lets me use the input of a black and white picture to get different material inputs on the black and on the white part of the picture. Very useful, when a skirt has only one material zone ...
Different bumps, different textures, whatever.

Anybody?

Post edited by Kerya on
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Comments

  • mjc1016mjc1016 Posts: 15,001
    edited December 1969

    Not that I know of...but take a look at this...


    Richard posted a recipe for doing double sided...

    http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/15484/P15/

    And 3dcheapskate has a layered material

    http://www.sharecg.com/v/66637/browse/21/DAZ-Studio/DAZ-Studio-Shader-For-S.E.Asian-Shields

  • KeryaKerya Posts: 10,943
    edited January 2013

    Thank you for answering!

    Well, maybe I just have to give up on the idea ... sigh.

    Edit: downloading the shields and this shader thing now and going to poke at it. LOL

    Post edited by Kerya on
  • BejaymacBejaymac Posts: 1,835
    edited December 1969

    In SM it's called the Mix brick, you plug your "mask" into the alpha, and use the base & layer to add your effects to it.

  • KeryaKerya Posts: 10,943
    edited December 1969

    Thank you very, very much!
    I love this forum! :D

  • KeryaKerya Posts: 10,943
    edited December 1969

    More questions - I am getting an error message when rendering and the different bump maps don't show and I don't know how to give them different settings (min and max).

    3Delight message #145 (Severity 1): S2073: 'elr_9217ba45_c801_4421_913f_8e6c24749280_token_187' is not a parameter of shader 'brickyard/{5418713f-3ab8-4f30-88c3-35a456099b1a}/shader_Displacement'

    shadermixerBrickyard.jpg
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  • BejaymacBejaymac Posts: 1,835
    edited January 2013

    1) What are you trying to achieve, bump, displacement or both.

    2) JPG don't have an alpha channel, so none of your image map bricks are outputting anything to the Mix brick, use Color instead.

    Edit

    The attached pic is something along the lines of what you want for Bump, the three Image Map bricks have been slightly renamed to show where they are meant to connect.

    masking_bump.jpg
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    Post edited by Bejaymac on
  • mjc1016mjc1016 Posts: 15,001
    edited December 1969

    Bejaymac said:
    2) JPG don't have an alpha channel, so none of your image map bricks are outputting anything to the Mix brick, use Color instead.
    .

    Or if you need the alpha channel, you will need to switch to png or tif images...

  • PendraiaPendraia Posts: 3,591
    edited December 1969

    Kerya said:
    OK, the title says it all ...

    But for those not knowing Poser, but DazStudio:
    The Blender node lets me use the input of a black and white picture to get different material inputs on the black and on the white part of the picture. Very useful, when a skirt has only one material zone ...
    Different bumps, different textures, whatever.

    Anybody?

    Beaten to the punch as your initial question has been answered. I just want to mention that you can mix other bricks beside the image brick. I've been using Marble with the edgeblend to get the first effect and the second is using the checker with an image tile with edge blend. Edge blend is great as it allows you to blend two colours an inner and an outer colour, I like to plug one into the base and one into the layer of a mix block and the image with the checks has the checker brick plugged into the alpha with an image attached in grayscale.
    checks_with_image.jpg
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    yellowwithpurplemarble2.jpg
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  • KeryaKerya Posts: 10,943
    edited January 2013

    Thank you Bejaymac!
    I was tired when I tried that.
    (Note to myself: don't dare the shadermixer when you are tired!)

    I want two different Bumps - I just imported the shader from the existing texture and thought I can split from there.
    A noise map at the bottom of the skirt to get a velvet effect hemline and "normal" cloth bump map for the rest.

    OK, and specular will get two different settings too (if I succeed) a velvet node for the hemline and normal for the rest.

    Pendraia: you lost me. Looks great, but I really can't visualize what you did to get those effects it. LOL

    Post edited by Kerya on
  • PendraiaPendraia Posts: 3,591
    edited December 1969

    Kerya said:
    Thank you Bejaymac!
    I was tired when I tried that.
    (Note to myself: don't dare the shadermixer when you are tired!)

    I want two different Bumps - I just imported the shader from the existing texture and thought I can split from there.
    A noise map at the bottom of the skirt to get a velvet effect hemline and "normal" cloth bump map for the rest.

    OK, and specular will get two different settings too (if I succeed) a velvet node for the hemline and normal for the rest.

    Pendraia: you lost me. Looks great, but I really can't visualize what you did to get those effects it. LOL

    Sorry I lost you...I'll try and post the network this weekend. Won't get time before that as I started back at work today.
  • KeryaKerya Posts: 10,943
    edited December 1969

    It's not you - it's me. I just rarely venture into the Shadermixer ... it is scary! ;)

  • PendraiaPendraia Posts: 3,591
    edited December 1969

    Kerya said:
    It's not you - it's me. I just rarely venture into the Shadermixer ... it is scary! ;)

    When I first started to use it my brain felt like it was melting out of my ears...at times it still feels like that! So I get where you're coming from...; )

  • BejaymacBejaymac Posts: 1,835
    edited December 1969

    No scarier than the material room in Poser, even today most Poser users rarely venture into it, and if it wasn't for people like BB sharing their wisdom there would be even less using it. Our problem is the usual lack of information, so for most of us it's a case of groping around in the dark, something I'd probably still be doing if Richard hadn't thrown me a light back in 3.0, as I had no idea what I was doing (still don't half the time) as maths and me don't get on, I failed it badly 30+ years ago and haven't looked at it since. But that doesn't stop me experimenting, create a primitive, splatter it in bricks from SM and hit render, you might get something nice, then again you might not, but it's all experience.

    The Mix brick is quite powerful as it helps you create some weird and wonderful effects, there's usually one of them in most things I do, there's a thread on the old forums by Saganami that showed you what you could achieve with multiple masks on one material zone, sadly the pictures don't show for me on that thread any more.

  • KeryaKerya Posts: 10,943
    edited December 1969

    Well, I will try to be brave (and more awake) and brace myself to venture in that place again.
    LOL

    To see pictures from the forumarchive:
    Open this link in a new tab: http://forumarchive.daz3d.com/postimages/origimage_1_2481516.jpg
    Now copy/paste the origimage_xxxxxx.jpg part in the thread to the Origimage_xxxx.jpg part of the link above.

    Could you give me the link to that thread???

  • BejaymacBejaymac Posts: 1,835
    edited December 1969

    Here's the Link and thanks for the tip on seeing the pictures.

  • KeryaKerya Posts: 10,943
    edited December 1969

    Thank you - together we are strong! :)

  • PendraiaPendraia Posts: 3,591
    edited December 1969

    Bejaymac said:
    No scarier than the material room in Poser, even today most Poser users rarely venture into it, and if it wasn't for people like BB sharing their wisdom there would be even less using it. Our problem is the usual lack of information, so for most of us it's a case of groping around in the dark, something I'd probably still be doing if Richard hadn't thrown me a light back in 3.0, as I had no idea what I was doing (still don't half the time) as maths and me don't get on, I failed it badly 30+ years ago and haven't looked at it since. But that doesn't stop me experimenting, create a primitive, splatter it in bricks from SM and hit render, you might get something nice, then again you might not, but it's all experience.

    The Mix brick is quite powerful as it helps you create some weird and wonderful effects, there's usually one of them in most things I do, there's a thread on the old forums by Saganami that showed you what you could achieve with multiple masks on one material zone, sadly the pictures don't show for me on that thread any more.

    That sounds remarkably similar to what I do...

  • KeryaKerya Posts: 10,943
    edited December 1969

    Oh yes, it is me again ... sorry!

    I am still getting an error message when rendering:
    3Delight message #43 (Severity 0): R2093: object '' (displacement 'brickyard/{e3749dad-6b1a-49f8-9aad-f50a55330521}/shader_Displacement', surface 'brickyard/{e3749dad-6b1a-49f8-9aad-f50a55330521}/shader_Surface') used only 0% of its displacement bound

    I am attaching pictures of the shadermixer and of the skirt - the green hemline should have a different bump than the rest, and I even succeeded in finding where to get different strength for both, but the error message is annoying ... help?

    skirt.jpg
    244 x 395 - 27K
    shadermixerMix.jpg
    1348 x 830 - 195K
  • BejaymacBejaymac Posts: 1,835
    edited December 1969

    Do any of the textures you have plugged into Bump look like a trans map ie Black with White bits on it, 3Delight has never liked them, but it's hatred of them is amplified when you use the Shader Mixer, even the pattern bricks will generate that error in Bump, plug them into Displacement and you get a severity 1 error message.

  • Tempest!Tempest! Posts: 0
    edited December 1969

    Considering that you (or at least I) get that kind of error messages pretty much every time I render - using standard shaders (DSdefault, US and HSS) - I wouldn't pay it any mind if everything seems to work otherwise.

  • Richard HaseltineRichard Haseltine Posts: 96,219
    edited December 1969

    It's a warning, not an error - it just means that DS has been told to look up to x cm from the current surface point to see if the geometry gets displaced that far, and it didn't anywhere on the named surface (falling short by a certain percentage). Because looking around for displaced geometry takes time you are given the warning so that you can fine-tune your shaders to speed the render process.

  • KeryaKerya Posts: 10,943
    edited February 2013

    Where do I tell DS not to look so far away?
    Please?
    Or how do I finetune my shader?

    Post edited by Kerya on
  • BejaymacBejaymac Posts: 1,835
    edited December 1969

    Just ignore it, it's only if you start getting severity 2 & 3 warnings that you need to change things.

    Yes it's annoying as hell seeing the errors especially if your a bit OCD like me, I hate seeing error messages in the log and have to go out of my way to find what's causing it, and then figuring out how to fix it, most of the content I've downloaded over the years has been rebuilt a couple of times, just to stop it from throwing up errors in the log.

    @ Tempest!, if that's from rendering V4/M4/Genesis then check the eyelash material, chances are the transmap has been plugged into displacement, move it to Bump instead and you'll get rid of the error, the devs have been good at getting 3Delight to stop producing that warning with those shaders, but that eyelash still does it, I think it's due to the double opacity and reflection when the eyelash shadow hits the eye. If you still want displacement on the lashes then you could always take the transmap into Photoshop, and turn all of the black into medium gray (RGB 128,128,128), save it as a new texture and plug that into displacement, that will also stop the warning as you would now be using a proper displacement map.

  • Tempest!Tempest! Posts: 0
    edited December 1969

    Hmm, that's good to know. What exactly do you mean by a "proper" displacement map?

    There does in fact seems to be a transmap acting as a displacement map on the eyelashes - probably on most of my characters (which isn't really surprising). The eyelashes aren't the only thing causing the warning, I'm getting it with several other displacement maps on the skin surfaces.

    I have no trouble not caring as long something doesn't affect my workflow, but the more you know... :)

  • KeryaKerya Posts: 10,943
    edited December 1969

    Well, I found I am only getting the message with Shadow Mapped Lights - raytraced are fine.

    But I had to give up on the skirt - with the mixed bump I am loosing the metallic shine I have on the top.
    One of the attached pictures is with the shader mixer mixed brick for the skirt bump, the other without. The effect is subtle, but I prefer the skirt cloth to look like the top cloth ...

    dress2.jpg
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    dress1.jpg
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  • Richard HaseltineRichard Haseltine Posts: 96,219
    edited December 1969

    Kerya said:
    Where do I tell DS not to look so far away?
    Please?
    Or how do I finetune my shader?

    On the base shaders it looks out to the greater of min and max multiplied by the displacement strength, as far as I know, and the issue can be avoided only by having maps that use the full dynamic range from black to white. With Shader Mixer there's a setting on the root brick that controls how far the shader looks, so you can adjust it to allow for the expected range of values.

  • 3dcheapskate3dcheapskate Posts: 2,689
    edited February 2013

    Hi Kerya, I'm a bit late to this party - just spotted the thread.

    Kerya said:
    Well, I found I am only getting the message with Shadow Mapped Lights - raytraced are fine.

    But I had to give up on the skirt - with the mixed bump I am loosing the metallic shine I have on the top.
    One of the attached pictures is with the shader mixer mixed brick for the skirt bump, the other without. The effect is subtle, but I prefer the skirt cloth to look like the top cloth ...

    Don't give up on the skirt - it's looking wonderful, and I'm sure that the brains trust here should be able to solve the problems! You say the difference is subtle: I overlaid your two renders in GIMP using 'difference' mode and it's very subtle indeed (first attached image)! I boosted brightness to 127 and contrast to 64 to bring out the differences (second image). It seems to me that there's almost as much difference in the top as in the bottom?

    What does anyone else think?

    P.S. I noticed that the metallic shine on the top is most noticeable on the more horizontally oriented areas, i.e. tops of the arms, shoulders and breasts. There's nothing at this angle on the skirt.

    P.S.2 The DMS(Full) shader from the "DAZ Studio Shader For S.E.Asian Shields" (should be in your DS content folder under Shaders > 3DCheapskate > Mask Combiners after unzipping) was intended for exactly the sort of thing you're doing, i.e. using a greyscale mask to apply two completely different materials to a single material zone. It's a bit of overkill for most purposes since it layer mixes every parameter for the surface (except normal map and refraction - there's still issues with both of those) when most people probably only want to mix one or two - but I worked on the basis that it's far less tedious to delete the bricks you don't need than to create new mixer bricks, image bricks, etc, for each parameter!

    Compare.jpg
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    Compare1.jpg
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    Post edited by 3dcheapskate on
  • KeryaKerya Posts: 10,943
    edited December 1969

    Thank you!
    I did look at the DMS - blinked - and closed it.
    Sorry, I am really not that easily intimidated, but I simply don't know enough about the shadermixer to know what to delete.

    I don't even know why the mix brick for bump changes the colour and sheen - the colour is lighter and it looses the metallic shine.

  • 3dcheapskate3dcheapskate Posts: 2,689
    edited February 2013

    Kerya said:
    ...I did look at the DMS - blinked - and closed it...

    ROFL! I don't blame you - like I said it was rather overkill! I've started putting annotated screenshots of the Poser/DS shader networks on the download pages so at least people know what to expect.

    ...I don't even know why the mix brick for bump changes the colour and sheen - the colour is lighter and it looses the metallic shine...

    Simple answer - it doesn't. Full stop. So it must be a combination of the lighting and the bump that's giving the impression of change to colour/sheen. Since you (I assume) used the same lighting for both renders, then the mixed bump alone must be the culprit - which is what you'd expect.

    Have you got the mask image the wrong way round? I know it sounds stupid, but I've done it so many times myself - it's always worth checking.A simple way to check is just to swap the Base and Layer inputs of the mix brick.

    As another check try plugging the bump output into the diffuse colour input of the DAZ Default Material (and unplug it from the Displace input of the DAZ Default Displacement brick).

    Post edited by 3dcheapskate on
  • KeryaKerya Posts: 10,943
    edited December 1969

    Thank you for taking the time!

    Same lights for both. I checked the mask - I get nice velvety flowers and a flat trim if I swap base and layer.
    LOL

    The only thing different between top and skirt is the bump.
    For the top I have the good old bump in the surface tab with percentage, min and max.
    For the shader mixer I have the strength / negative bump / positive bump in the DS Default Displacement brick and then I can tell by way of the two Image Maps and their strength how much of each I want ... maybe it did get it too wrong. I tried with more or less bump for the nonvelvet part - but I just don't get the same effect like for the top.

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