[mverta]

There is a very important control missing from the metal/plastic shader, and that is a way to control the angle/direction of microgrooves on an anisotropic surface.

For example, take metal starship hulls: All the panels on the hull actually reflect to the same degree, but the grooves are at different angles, so as the reflection/specular passes along the surface, different panels light up at different times. (The diffuse/reflection map cheat everyone uses where some areas are just less or more reflective is not accurate.)

This would also apply to metal paint flake shaders. In metallic paint, the flakes are trapped in the basecoat at slightly different angles, so the little flakes "light up" in reflection at different times, making it sparkle.

This is not a case of areas being more/less uv rough, or more/less reflective. It's a very different control. I've built a ton of mental ray shaders that utilize camera-normal lookup tricks to derive the proper look, but I think Maxwell is just the renderer to finally do it right, and accurately.

_Mike

[Mihai]

that's what the separate u/v roughness settings are supposed to do. But they are not yet separate. It's just makes the same roughness in both u and v for now.

[mverta]

I'm trying to think about the process of actually making a map that'd take advantage of the separate uv controls as you suggest. Actually, you'd need 2 maps... and as you're making them, you'd need to be able to pre-composite them to see approximately what the final effect would be.

Might be easier, from a mapping standpoint, to have an "Amount" slider and a "Direction" slider. Both mappable, obviously.

_Mike

[Micha]

Hallo Mike,

sounds very good, you could post it in the wish forum.