How do you use Gemologica

natclarke

Hi

I purchased Gemologica and would like to know how to use it

thanks

Natalie

jestmart

You use it like any other shader. Select object from Scene pane, select object's surface/material zone from Surface pane, double click shader to apply.

SpottedKitty

Note that if you switch from whatever tool you're using to the Surface Selection tool, you can combine the two "select/select" actions in a single click. If you have the Surfaces tab open as well, you'll also see the selected surface highlighted, so you know exactly the extent of what the new material will be applied to.

Watch out for the tiling settings, these can completely alter the appearance of the new material.

sriesch

When you use the various emboss, engrave, and pendant displacement patterns, the default value may be too small to see. After applying the shader, in the Surfaces pane, raise the values of the parameters for displacement strength and/or minimum displacement and maximum displacement.

natclarke

I can't find anything in shading area on left from geologica to even select.

I go to the content on the right but nothing changes there.

Regards
Natalie

sriesch

I'm not sure what "on left" and "on right" are referring to. Can you post a screen shot?

Here's an example of how one might use it. Create a new primative like a cube or something. In the toolbar, click the Surface Selection tool icon, then click on the primative to select it's surface. In the Content Library pane, enter "dalmation jasper.dsa" and double-click on the resulting content thumbnail. Your shader is now applied, and you should be able to see it and render it.

If you have misplaced the shaders from the this product in your content library, in the Content Library pane click on Products > G > Gemologica, and you should see some of the library thumbnails for the product. (oddly, I don't see them all here though, I only see a few, and I'm not sure why.) Hopefully you have put them all in the same place though and once you find one of them, you can categorize to see where it is and find the others normally.

EDITED TO ADD: haha, I wasn't seeing them all because I was only looking at page 1 of the results which only listed 1-264 of 902, the other thumbnails were just on page 2 and beyond.

SpottedKitty

Can you take a screenshot and post it? One disadvantage of D|S having a completely flexible user interface with several preset styles, is that there's no guarantee everyone in any given conversation is seeing the same D|S setup; "on the left" and "on the right" won't mean the same thing to everyone.

It doesn't help that default "training wheels" mode deliberately hides many advanced features and functions.

E.g. I use something as close as I can get to the old D|S3 Classic setup, which is almost but not quite completely unrecognisable to anyone who's never changed from the default D|S4 setup.

natclarke

Here is my screen.

regards

Natalie

SpottedKitty

It's been shrunk down much too small, I can't read most of the text labels, and I don't use that layout so I don't know what they ought to read.

I think I see part of the problem (incidentally, I use a layout with Content Library on the left and Surfaces on the right, try it and see if that's easier to work with). In the Surfaces tab, you have the Presets sub-tab selected, change to the Editor sub-tab and you'll see all the selectable surfaces and materials parameters.

natclarke said:

I can't find anything in shading area on left from geologica to even select.

The Surfaces tab (not "shading area") is for altering the materials parameters of objects in your scene, not the settings in the Gemologica scripts.

sriesch

I don't use the Presets tab in the Surfaces pane so I'm not sure how that works, I normally just load the shaders from the Content Library. However I tried clicking on the Surfaces pane's Presets tab like you have on the left in your screenshot, and I see the Gemologica shaders listed there. The location and name is different, so I assume that is being picked up from however you and I have customized the content library differently. I would suggest trying a few things:

First, see if the content is even installed correctly. Can you find it in the Content Library pane where it is supposed to be in the Content Library pane on the right? (which would also work as a workaround.) You might already have it displayed on the right in your screenshot, but it's too small to read so I'm not sure if that's it (remember there are a lot, you'll need to click on the right arrow button where it says "<- 1 ->" and/or scroll down.

Second, could you have just accidentally moved it somewhere else where you are not looking for it? In the Surfaces pane's Presets tab, click All instead of what you have in the screenshot, then in the search field type the content thumbnail name and see if it shows up.

Also your screenshot shows you have the universal tool active. Remember you need to click on the surface selection tool (one tool to the right in your toolbar) then click the surface before applying it.

SpottedKitty

For what it's worth, here's how I see Gemologica, using the supplied pendant to give materials to fiddle with. The Gemologica content is all neatly listed in the Content Library tab on the left, and the Disk (see it selected in the Viewport) material parameters are all displayed in the Surfaces tab on the right.

(Note that I don't use any of the "room view" layouts, or Smart Content, Categories, or anything that needs the content database, and I prefer to use the View As Tree option. YMMV.)