How do you use Shaders?

DDCreate

I have some I ray shader packs that have been collecting dust (carpet, stone, wood. metal) and was hoping to apply them to some parts of my scenes for a little extra effect. But when i select elements in my scene, the Surfaces Menu doesn't allow me to apply anything. Is that not possible or am I doing something wrong? I'm trying to do things like apply a paint shader to a wall. I assumed that's what they were for. Can anyone help?

DDCreate

Sorry, i don't know how to delete. I figured it out, have to select it in Editor first then go back to surfaces. Sorry. :)

riftwitch

DDCreate said:

Sorry, i don't know how to delete. I figured it out, have to select it in Editor first then go back to surfaces. Sorry. :)

I don't think you can delete a post. You could edit it to indicate it was solved. I think you could edit the thread title to indicate the problem was solved, too.

I was going to offer some help, but I see you figured it out. Shaders are one of my favorite things to work with. They're great for bringing a sense of unity to items drawn from disparate sources, whether you're kitbashing an outfit on a human figure, or building an urban scene with buildings from different sets. Another great use is giving new life to older products whose textures may not fit well with newer items in you scene.

Richard Haseltine

You can also use the Surface Selection tool, which selects both the object and the surface when you click. It does fail when one surface is under another (as with eyes) but works for most things.

Roman_K2

I'm not sure about mentioning the Uber base... I *think* I've seen it mentioned as being optional... anyway what I've been doing is I first select the object or area in the scene... note that with some products like the luxury business jet, it is hard to "isolate" individual objects as the overal model is somehow "fixed in place" or otherwise compiled? With optional boundaries: these could be as big as an airplane seat or as small as a cup of coffee. Not sure... anyway clicking around the desired object may bring up different surface zones, for instance the new illuminated alphabet set may take separate shaders for both the inside and the "outside" of the letters. Then I click on the Uber shader under Shader Presets > Iray > DAZ if I remember correctly, followed by some other shader for instance "NVIDIA" which comes with DAZ Studio, or one by Jen Greenlees which comes as a pay "add-on" as described above.

That seems to more or less do the trick although I'm not sure how to adjust the relative "size" of the shader, for instance with chain mail the "size" for mailed trappings on a large horse say would be different than the same thing on a kid's costume say. That one I haven't figured out yet.

Also on the luxury jet -- to pick an example at random -- it seems to be hard to make the ENTIRE outer surface of the aircraft "brushed aluminum" say, or "white porcelain" for a white enamel paint look say.

One other thing I don't understand is what happens/how do you control the extreme edges of an object, eg. how does a rough shader like chain mail or shag carpet wrap around, and how far does the roughness "extend", out from the edge of the model.

Finally I can handle "coloured skins" on Genesis (red for a demon or a Flash-like character say, or green for Green Lantern or the Riddler) but what the heck is a "merchant skin resource" pack?

scorpio

To change the scale of a shader use the Tile dials in the surfaces tab

jestmart

The Iray Uber shader allows you tile individual channels by clicking on the image block and selecting Image Editor and switch to the Instance Tiling tab.

IceDragonArt

Roman_K2 said:

I'm not sure about mentioning the Uber base... I *think* I've seen it mentioned as being optional... anyway what I've been doing is I first select the object or area in the scene... note that with some products like the luxury business jet, it is hard to "isolate" individual objects as the overal model is somehow "fixed in place" or otherwise compiled? With optional boundaries: these could be as big as an airplane seat or as small as a cup of coffee. Not sure... anyway clicking around the desired object may bring up different surface zones, for instance the new illuminated alphabet set may take separate shaders for both the inside and the "outside" of the letters. Then I click on the Uber shader under Shader Presets > Iray > DAZ if I remember correctly, followed by some other shader for instance "NVIDIA" which comes with DAZ Studio, or one by Jen Greenlees which comes as a pay "add-on" as described above.

That seems to more or less do the trick although I'm not sure how to adjust the relative "size" of the shader, for instance with chain mail the "size" for mailed trappings on a large horse say would be different than the same thing on a kid's costume say. That one I haven't figured out yet.

Also on the luxury jet -- to pick an example at random -- it seems to be hard to make the ENTIRE outer surface of the aircraft "brushed aluminum" say, or "white porcelain" for a white enamel paint look say.

One other thing I don't understand is what happens/how do you control the extreme edges of an object, eg. how does a rough shader like chain mail or shag carpet wrap around, and how far does the roughness "extend", out from the edge of the model.

Finally I can handle "coloured skins" on Genesis (red for a demon or a Flash-like character say, or green for Green Lantern or the Riddler) but what the heck is a "merchant skin resource" pack?

A merchant resource pack is for use in a program such as photoshop or gimp to create new skins for a characters textures.