Gemology Volume 1 and 2 Out Now [Commercial]
IgnisSerpentus
Posts: 2,475
in The Commons
I am late doing a thread, as I have the funkiest funk of all the funk (tis the season to be sickly lol)
But all that fun aside... Ive released some iray shaders that are Gemstones. Not only can they be used in your renders, but also commercially in your own sets
Got any questions, just shoot! I also have some tips, see below.....
Comments
They are beautiful, Iggy! I picked them up as soon as they came out. I knew they'd be awesome. Hope you feel better soon. We've had the funk here too, and it wasn't the disco kind!
I was playing with them earlier today, and decided to test them on an array of different things, including war bird... and I wanted to make some notes for you guys so you can use them more easily.
Tip one: uv scale. You're going to have to change this depending on the item you add them to and its uv scale. Some are big, some are small... so you will have to alter the uv scale to make the patterning bigger or smaller (so it looks proper for the model)
Tip two: If you are using them on faceted gemstones models, you will have to reset the angle on the jewel to 40 or less, to retain the crispness of the faceting (such as is the case with war bird's jewels) Most of the solid gems are intended for cabochon type cuts, and faceted gems tend to have more refracting stones in the real world. But there's really no rules in 3Dland.
Tip three: Dealing with Refraction. These were done to a skull (the skull from Phantoms II) but when you want to add the refracting rutilated gems to something smaller or more shallow vs deeper in scale, you may actually need to decrease the refraction weight to get the rutilation or cracking inherent in the textures to be more prominent. Its really entirely up to taste, tho, and how you want it to look. Higher refraction weight will give a more glassy look.
Tip four: Dealing with the opals... In the same way you will have to change the uv scale, you may also have to change the metallic flake size on the opals, to account for smaller items vs bigger ones. By default, its set to .27, but I have decreased that to .10 in these renders.
And on the opals... you can also change the color of the fire (the little flecks) by changing the metallic fleck map. There are quite a few different colors included, and recommend using one that is contrasting so it shows up better. Again tho, it comes down to taste.
TY hon! And lol Id much prefer the disco kind. But ack... I hope you are feeling better. I am a lot better today than yesterday, but whew, its a bad one.
These look great and are definitely in my wishlist. Gonna pick them up soon :)
Laurie
You don't need to change the smoothing angle. You can turn smoothing off and then set the "Round Corners Radius" to a very small number so that there's a tiny bit of roundoff on the edges of the gems so that they reflect light (there are no perfectly sharp edges in nature). I usually start at a value of 0.001 and decrease or increase the value from there - whichever is needed. :)
Laurie
Hi Laurie, would you please clarify where these parameters can be found? The rings look great! Are they from a commercially available product?
EDIT: forgot to mention these shaders look amazing, IgnisSerpentus! In my cart for today's spree!
@pds Resistance is futile! LOL
Trust me...I've already been assimilated, lol
Yep, that totally works too... and thats an interesting little dial to play with, actually. Ive never messed with it before
@pds its an iray setting on the material. Just scroll all the way down.
Great, thank you!
Np! and ty too for the compliment
Yes, I'm sorry....it's at the bottom of the Iray shader "stack" on the Surface tab ;).
I can't wait to get these shaders and try them out, especially the opal :P
@pds...they aren't really rings, they're bangles (but I supposed you could use them as rings if you wanted to..lol). They're on the list for me to release into my freebies whenever I get off my lazy butt and prepare them. ;).
Laurie
@AllenArt please release your bangles, I love your stuff
Thanks for your response, and your bangles look great! If you make them available, I would love to use them.
Hey, thanks Kat... would love to see what ya did with them.
And yes, the bangles do look really nice. You should totally release them :adds to peer pressure lol:
I promise I'll get them into my freebies soon™
Laurie
The Opal alone did it for me. 'Course I'm not ignoring the other choices.
heh yah the opal is my fave too. Im biased tho, coz opal is my fave in general (prolly can tell with as many opal options as I did lol)
For those that care, I put both of the gemmy bangles on ShareCG. Haven't tried out any of IS's shaders on them, but I'm going to :D. I bet they look great (especially the opals :P).
Laurie
Awesome, thank you for sharing them! Do you go by the same user name on ShareCG?
Yes, but the link is in my signature ;) Look down. LOL
lol, well, no sigs seem to display when reading the forums on my phone, but I'll definitely download them later when I'm back at my computer!