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Hi,

i am just experimenting a bit with material creation and have a question.

I`ve done this small barrel-scene. Please look at the metal rings.

The left two or the upper two metal rings of the barrels get very dark at flat angles while the others are looking ok.
The only difference is that in the base layer the brighter ones have roughness 99 and the darker ones roughness 90.

This is how i set up the material:

.global bump normalmap-tex
.....layer1 normal 100
..........gloss weight 30
...............ref 0 Tex
...............ref 90 Tex +20 brightness
...............ND 3
...............Roughn 50
..........base weight 70
...............ref 0 Tex
...............ref 90 Tex +20 brightness
...............ND 1.5
...............Roughn 90

I am surprised that the change of the result is so extreme for this little change in roughness of only the baselayer.
From watching Mike Vertas video tutorial i remember that i should use roughness lower than 99 for realism, which i did.
But for my eyes the brighter metalrings look better.

Looking forward to your opinion and tips.

Thanks
Dirk

Funny thing,

just when i ask a question i find the error myself. It was a to strong normal map.
But nevertheless i am curious about what you say to my material setup.

Is it how it should be done? Anything i should/could improve?

Dirk

Instead of using a 30% weighted gloss layer, I would create a specular map and use it a s a weight map for your gloss layer, and make it an additive layer.

Hi Brian,

it would look like this then?

.global bump normalmap-tex
.....glosslayer 30 texture additive
..........weight 100
...............ref 0 Tex
...............ref 90 Tex +20 brightness
...............ND 3
...............Roughn 50
.....baselayer 100(or70?) normal
..........weight 100
...............ref 0 Tex
...............ref 90 Tex +20 brightness
...............ND 1.5
...............Roughn 90

What i don`t understand is the ref 0 channel in the gloss layer.
When the mode is additive i would assume that having an average grey in ref 0 baselayer and an average grey in ref 0 glosslayer results in white for the color of the object.
But this don`t happen. The grey color stays the same and only the highlights are getting very strong.

O.k. just tested it with high roughness and object became white.

I put the question the other way round:
Where do i have to pay attention to regarding ref 0 and ref 90 channel, when i set up the material in the way you suggested?

Greets
Dirk

Check out the way I set up the Arroway materials (last post) http://www.maxwellrender.com/forum/view ... 8&start=15

This is the best way I've found to use a "specular" layer as a spot varnish type effect.

Best,
Jason.

Thanks Jason,

As far as i see you use a brighter texture for the ref 90 only in the base- and not in the shine-layer.
That what confuses me a bit is that you use force fresnel with textures.

But thanks for shareing.
I`ll try your and Brians way of creating materials as soon as possible.

Unfortunately i`ll be away from my comp for a week or so.
So testing will have to wait until then.

cheers
Dirk

Yep, that was an experiment to test Force Fresnel with textures that worked IMO -- bear in mind that Force Fresnel has less impact as the roughness increases, which is where the intensity of the maps comes into play. Since I have an inverted map in the roughness slot only the lightest areas of the reflectance maps will be a full Force Fresnel strength. Using Force Fresnel is just a way to make sure the maximum reflectivity is at a predictable level (Nd whatever) regardless of the contents of the map.

Also since I have a matching layer-mask map that masks out all the low roughness areas it keeps the gloss (erstwhile specular) only where it needs to be, thus avoiding the gray/white dusty look in low roughness areas. I control the over all shininess of the "spot-varnished" areas by setting the layer mask percentage.

I don't think there is any benefit to increasing the value of the reflectance 90 map in the "specular layer" as it often has pure white in it already. To me this is no different than putting matching colors in both slots and turning on Force Fresnel. I like to let Maxwell control the falloff whenever possible as I think it will always be more realistic than my settings

I tried every possible permutation with those Arroway specular maps to achieve materials that would match the intents of the original map settings within Maxwell predictably with every material... different settings looked better on different maps but these were the settings that looked best on average for all the materials.

A "one-size-fits-all" solution in Maxwell is hard to come by.


Best,
Jason.