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Let's say you're supposed to render a plastic product, which has a matte surface.
You would probably then revert to making the material less shiny by playing wit the roughness parameter, rather than applying a fine bump map.

But most plastic is actually more glossy, and it's the fine bumpy texture on the surface that make it appear matte.

So, if there was a native 3D procedural map in the material editor, you could apply this and get the right scale every time, without any mapping efforts in your 3D program.

Also, you'd be able to define a standard material surface finish library, ranging from polished SP-A1 to charmille 5-40 (EDG) (rough)

most plastic goods are produceb by molding, and the surface finishes are using a standard, how about even incorporating that directly into the renderer?

Thanks for a great piece of software,


Johan
Industrial designer

You join us on the procedural wish

johanbirger wrote:Let's say you're supposed to render a plastic product, which has a matte surface.
You would probably then revert to making the material less shiny by playing wit the roughness parameter, rather than applying a fine bump map.

But most plastic is actually more glossy, and it's the fine bumpy texture on the surface that make it appear matte.

So, if there was a native 3D procedural map in the material editor, you could apply this and get the right scale every time, without any mapping efforts in your 3D program.

Also, you'd be able to define a standard material surface finish library, ranging from polished SP-A1 to charmille 5-40 (EDG) (rough)

most plastic goods are produceb by molding, and the surface finishes are using a standard, how about even incorporating that directly into the renderer?

Thanks for a great piece of software,


Johan
Industrial designer

Procedural maps would be a huge help - it would be much easier to duplicate surfaces with various amounts of texture (like Mold-Tech's). It amazes me that procedural maps are not a Next Limit priority since textures do appear in the "real world" and Next Limit markets Maxwell as a way to duplicate photography. It is a major pain to use bitmaps for different types of textures in Maxwell, when they are easily created in other renderers that support procedural maps.

As an industrial Designer I'm missing these fine and subtle structures too. I think it would be much easier to set up a specific roughness for molded plastic than do the mapping over and over again. Especially Rhino is horrifying sometimes (for me). And these small structures are making the difference for close ups. With powder-coatings it's the same issue.

I like your idea about the "surface finish library" especially when I have to look up textures in the Mold-Tech or Eschmann catalogues. It would make life much easier with this especially most of the products come along with these standard roughnesses.

Don't know the reason for no procedurals... but i join the "procedural wish club"

While we wait for something like this to be added to Maxwell (yep i also want procedurals), i suspect that someone.. might be able to grant your wishes using textures to replicate the types of surfaces you product designer guys are looking for.

/ Max