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Is there a best way to convert v1 materials into v2?

Of course you can open a v1 material and it automatically converts it but I wonder if this auto conversion is the best way. After all a typical v1 material will turn into a v2 material with a sort of empty bottom layer and then stacked added layers on top with various properties. I'd never consider creating a material in that fashion, so I wouldn't think it would be optimal.

-Brodie

You know, I thought the same thing, but I just got done doing a very complicated material and the bottom layer needed to be a dead black layer like the auto converts -- so it can be useful in certain circumstances.

Best,
Jason

The dummy black layer is necessary in this conversion because, 1.7 did not have its layers stacked. So, you don't need to worry as it's the most correct conversion for 1.7 materials with additive blending. The materials using normal blending won't end up with a black layer in the bottom. 90% of the materials won't need any additional touch for rendering properly in 2.0.

In that case, what exactly does this mean for material creation in v2 in terms of how they work differently from v1 materials?

For example, if I were to create a v2 material, when might I create a single layered material with 2 BSDF's and when might I create a 3 layered material with a "dummy" layer at the bottom and 1 BSDF per layer as the "autoconversion" gives us? What's the difference?

-Brodie

brodie_geers wrote:For example, if I were to create a v2 material, when might I create a single layered material with 2 BSDF's

It's the same principle with 1.7. You just have multiple BSDFs under a single layer. Old layer weights are new BSDF weights.

brodie_geers wrote:and when might I create a 3 layered material with a "dummy" layer at the bottom and 1 BSDF per layer as the "autoconversion" gives us? What's the difference?

Probably, you will never need to do that. Because, it's a general solution for avoiding a content-aware conversion which might sometimes fail. Because, in 1.7, additive blending was not working like 2.0 as there's no stacking system. This means user could set a specular layer below a lambert layer or do a more complicated setup. So, as 2.0 takes care of layer order, we had to add a base 0 instead of trying to figure what kind of addition user is trying to make with the old layers.