Digital Art Zone

Wendy - you slay me:)

They have these seriously icy roads in Oz?

Here’s a quick ‘n crappy example of the first steps I’d take in making a shader like that…

The purpose is to show how you want the goal to be having the viewer be able to “feel” and “experience” the texture. This one, I think, gives you a clear sensation of the presence of a rough, metallic texture that you can almost feel yourself running your hands over it.

Next step would be to include some reflective highlights on the surroundings like a rough metal/crystal texture would. Then give it some depth so it doesn’t look so metallic.

(BTW, click for the big image…the thumbnail looks pretty bad)

Oh, and the other important consideration is to make sure it interacts with the surroundings. That sells the concept.

BTW, this took 54 seconds to render, though in its final stage it would probably be quite a bit longer.

Time for bed. Three point seven foot long dynamic hair. lol
We’ll see if it behaves the animation.

The close-up camera angle from my art gallery scene, but using (most of) EP’s tweaks.

The effect of the translucency isn’t as pronounced here (which I regret) likely because of how I have the other light sources setup. Evil’s changes to the Shininess and Highlight definitely bring out the structure far better than my original shader.

@JM2K: Though we rarely agree on heated issues; I do happen to be in the same camp about studying objects and trying to simulate real-world effects. One crucial point here though is that this shader was entirely a joyous accidental discovery. It stemmed from a “that looks interesting” random play in Filter Forge to, “I wonder what it would look like on V4?”

Dartanbeck - 18 February 2013 09:14 PM

If you already have Fenrics Posing Pack 3, your ‘Edit’ menu gets a new Fenric > Unlock Figure command, which would allow you to select them and delete them and free up the resources. If you haven’t been following Sci Fi Funk’s latest series of video tutorials, you’ve been missing out on some great stuff.

I don’t have any of Fenric’s stuff. Based on other threads about his products, I am sure that is my loss. Actually a small gripe of mine (and the fault is mostly my own ignorance), is that many vendors state what a given plug-in will do using some technical term that I don’t understand. So while I see something on their page that looks good, it is not immediately obvious to me what I can do with it.

No, Gars, I’m not trying to get you to buy something!!! Just sayin’ - if you already have it! lol

  I don’t mind in the slightest.

An example of what I mean above: I found Carrara through a banner ad for DCG’s stuff. It was only in the last couple of months that I ended up buying some DCG plug-ins for Carrara. But I often browsed DCG’s site, staring and wondering if the purchase would be valuable to me. Now that I have some of of DCG’s stuff - I regret not getting it sooner.

The only caveat I have is that there is nil documentation (that I’ve found) so those technical terms still confuse and elude me. Heck, even some non-technical word choices…in the case of DCG, there is a “grout” property on nearly everything. Sure…I know what grouting is in the real world…but I don’t see what it means in the case of the shader. When I play with the property, all too often I don’t see any effect or change in the appearance. So I sit here in a daze wondering, “What the heck is this used for?”

Garstor - 19 February 2013 06:02 AM

The only caveat I have is that there is nil documentation (that I’ve found) so those technical terms still confuse and elude me. Heck, even some non-technical word choices…in the case of DCG, there is a “grout” property on nearly everything. Sure…I know what grouting is in the real world…but I don’t see what it means in the case of the shader. When I play with the property, all too often I don’t see any effect or change in the appearance. So I sit here in a daze wondering, “What the heck is this used for?”

Absolutely. Many of these tools are an invaluable aid to us. But we first have to learn what they’re used for and how to set them up - bringing up the hard part. Fenric can write the plugins and briefly explain their purpose. But the rest is up to us to figure out as our needs arise. At ShareCG, member “fabaone” has some fantastic free tutorials on some of Fenric’s plugins - namely the ERC controller. I have downloaded and printed them all out. I’ve still been tremendously foggy on implementing it. I recently went through her (faba’s) tutorials again and slapped my forehead… “Of Course!”... so I must be getting smarter in my mid age!

Dartanbeck - 19 February 2013 01:39 AM

Time for bed. Three point seven foot long dynamic hair. lol
We’ll see if it behaves the animation.

I rendered out the resulting animation, which illustrates my need for Dogwaffle Pro: Howler - for animation Post work. See the Video of three point seven foot Dynamic Hair!

Garstor - 19 February 2013 05:46 AM

The close-up camera angle from my art gallery scene, but using (most of) EP’s tweaks.

The effect of the translucency isn’t as pronounced here (which I regret) likely because of how I have the other light sources setup. Evil’s changes to the Shininess and Highlight definitely bring out the structure far better than my original shader.

@JM2K: Though we rarely agree on heated issues; I do happen to be in the same camp about studying objects and trying to simulate real-world effects. One crucial point here though is that this shader was entirely a joyous accidental discovery. It stemmed from a “that looks interesting” random play in Filter Forge to, “I wonder what it would look like on V4?”

GI will tend to mute specular effects. The translucency could be helped by using SSS. Expect it to take a whole lot longer to render though.

Hey Garstor, Do you have a link to that shader again? I wanna play!

Dartanbeck - 19 February 2013 04:55 PM

Hey Garstor, Do you have a link to that shader again? I wanna play!

Hey Dart, nice video. I like the movement. Well… Not the hair movement actually, but the characters’ movement. Nice lighting as well.

Garstor - 19 February 2013 05:46 AM

One crucial point here though is that this shader was entirely a joyous accidental discovery. It stemmed from a “that looks interesting” random play in Filter Forge to, “I wonder what it would look like on V4?”

And that’s fine if you were playing.

But the point is that you can play and make GOOD stuff as easily as you can play and make NOT SO GOOD stuff. If you develop your skills and make it a natural part of your playing, you don’t waste time doing stuff that won’t look good. It’s just as easy to select a bump that will look good as it is to select a bump that will look crummy. Same with every other setting you make.

So I’m merely suggesting that before you play you think and learn, so that your playing will be more productive.

Or not…

evilproducer - 19 February 2013 04:58 PM

Hey Dart, nice video. I like the movement. Well… Not the hair movement actually, but the characters’ movement. Nice lighting as well.

Thanks. I don’t care for the hair movement either. In this test, I was actually looking for that as well as a closer look at the Jittering issue. The thing that I do like about the hair is the actual, still life appearance of it. Once I get Dogwaffle, I’m planning to try and make some paint brush presets for painting the hair onto the figure entirely in post. Yeah… Post!
I’ve been studying the rotoscoping, alpha masking, and custom brush capabilities of Howler. The animated brush abilities are amazing - as are it’s abilities in mask swapping, keyframed painting and many others that I think will entirely change the way I animate in Carrara. Without any hair, my Rosie character slams through renders really fast… like lightning. All of the textures on her and her clothing are very low res.
Thanks about the lighting. I tried some entirely new techniques (to me) in lighting that environment. Thinking along the lines of a filtered artificial atmosphere, I decided to keep it relatively free of dust. There are still some shaders in there that I haven’t optimized yet, but it still looks good. Predatron3d is one of those vendors that I always trust. This is in my opinion one of the finest sci fi environment products available. I bought that mini submarine from the Platinum Club lineup of 1.99ers specifically for this locale - and the 14 MU Workers matching the thing to a tee was an added bonus - as I bought them all together using this same vision

Dartanbeck - 19 February 2013 04:55 PM

Hey Garstor, Do you have a link to that shader again? I wanna play!

http://www.sharecg.com/v/67250/view/7/Material-and-Shader/Crushed-Sapphire

I’ll leave it to you to apply Evil’s tweaks.

Now here is a friend of mine (non-CG artist…but knows what he likes! ) commenting on the new version of the shader:

Interesting. I think it has more of a glass/crystal feel than the original, but the texture map seems too regular to my eye - gives it almost a lizard skin feel to it (metaphorically of course). Colours look good as does the pattern of the blues.

An idea to possibly explore is removing the organic look of the model for a more linear one. That is - make it look more faceted. Like a gem. (I realize after looking at actual sapphire carvings that your original is more “realistic” but by making the figure more angular/faceted it conveys the “gem-like” nature more. A case of misrepresentation actually serving to convey the message more clearly).

Alternatively making it more glass like might allow the organic curves to look more mineral like.

This guy is one of my toughest critics…

So now I am wondering if it is worth playing with displacement mapping…very subtly…to try to make things appear more carved and angular on V4.

Garstor - 19 February 2013 06:07 PM

This guy is one of my toughest critics…

Umm…I don’t think so… 

Wow. I… ahhhh
Ignore instead… sheeesh!
Never ignored anyone before. Guess I gotta start somewhere.