[bathsheba]

I need a good basic material set. Not folders full of the same nonrealistic plastic material in a dozen different colors. Actual materials that I can use, or tweak lightly and use, in realistic scenes. In plastics, for instance, typical acrylic, polyethylene, polyurethane, polycarbonate, &ct.

Even if I want to absorb the equivalent of an undergraduate course in material science in order to use this material editor, I cannot research the manufacturing methods and composition of every plastic that I want to draw. It's ridiculous to set that expectation and then claim that the material editor is easy to use.

-Sheba

[Jonkey]

Mihai, I tip my hat! Thanks. Also, Im with Sheba. A typical material set would produce fast results and fast learning through material reverse engineering. I mean who isn't confident to just tweak a colour while learning the other presets. I was stoked to download the anodized red by JDHill and the plastics by Olivier from the maxwell goodies section. These materials allowed me to see a result made from their internal parameters. "Hats off again to all who post their MXM's".

[Richard]

I need a good basic material set. Not folders full of the same nonrealistic plastic material in a dozen different colors. Actual materials that I can use, or tweak lightly and use, in realistic scenes. In plastics, for instance, typical acrylic, polyethylene, polyurethane, polycarbonate, &ct.

Even if I want to absorb the equivalent of an undergraduate course in material science in order to use this material editor, I cannot research the manufacturing methods and composition of every plastic that I want to draw. It's ridiculous to set that expectation and then claim that the material editor is easy to use.

-Sheba

I agree I've been battling with studio and seem to have most things under wraps but material editing, this trial and error approach to materials when we are all building libraries of likely the smae materials due to an inappropriate or almost unusable material library.

I've been using Artlantis as a tool with SU and have witness scores of SU user taking up that same combo even though they have made investment in MR. Seems not everyone wants the most realsitic material representation but we do want something that at least looks close within a resonable time.

Like others I've trialled the plugin and studio with full success but when it comes to material editing all comes to a stop.

My personal view is that if NL don't consider the release of a good material set will some clear indication of the editing and clear tuts like the one Tom posted on satins etc clearly defining material creation we will waste 1000's of man hours all in search of the holly grail but most with little success and this will count negatively against NL.

People need to produce work not shaders I'd say given we have waited so long for a promised SIMPLE working version it's become a time of - supply or die!

For me I'm hoping that an alternative plugin may be devised or a third party material editor become available to make the current version work if its not soon!

[Mihai]

That's what the material wizards will be for.

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[Mihai]

But it is really such an impossible task to make a plastic material now? There is even a wizard for it already, and the manual covers the making of plastics very well.

[Leonardo]

How could you guys write 5 pages of "Understanding Maxwell material system" without posting a single picture
This is plain wrong!! I don't know about you guys, but I'm more of a visual person

leo

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[jonathan löwe]

@mihai: thanks for explanations

jona

[Mihai]

8etty, the nd values are important when making plastic, set the reflective bsdf nd to about 3. For metallic surfaces don't forget you can also use the complex ior files (common metals are in the folder named common in the Maxwell install dir). The good thing about the metallic ior files is that they render fast, unless you choose a transparent type ior file, in which case dispersion effect will take longer to render. So if you want to make a very nice fast smooth aluminium surface just load the al.ior file and adjust the roughness. Ofcourse you could also load the same ior file in two bsdf's, and set their roughness to different values. That makes a really nice rough polished aluminium material....

[oz42]

Mihai,

thanks for the explaination of the materials editor, it makes a lot more sense to me now.

I, like Frances, was confused about the useage of two bsdf layer but Tom's explaination that they are not actually "layers" helped.

In fact I was doing really well until you said "rough polished" but I guess I'll get my head round that too - in time!

Looking forward to your detailed explaination of ND's...

Thanks,

[Hugh]

But what about the materials. If I wanted to create for example a white paint finish with 30% gloss and a total reflectance of say 70%, it would be trial and error until I get the correct look. Where's the physical correctness in this? How are you supposed to define a physically correct material if such a basic property as total material reflectance is pure guesswork.

But how do you decide which part of light is glossy, and which is simply diffusely reflected? When does one part become the other? Is that how they measure materials in real life? Do you have a certain steel being officially defined as, 30% glossy and 70% reflective? I don't think so.

Then you need to have a re-think:
http://www.alanod.com/opencms/sites/ala ... index.html
http://www.coleparmer.com/techinfo/tech ... rement.htm

I fully accept that tons of thought has gone into the material system we now have. But I do think that its been too heavily influenced by the requirements of the artists in the A-team. I'm not saying that this level of flexibility isn't a good thing, it is. Its just that I'm not an artist and I want simple materials that look real. The main attraction for me initially was simplicity of set up and real looking materials, and the former at least is gone. I agree that real looking materials are still possible, but its so much more work and involves test render after test render to get a simple material looking right. I'm an engineer who needs the occasional product visualization. I don't want to spend hours just to get a paint material to look and behave like paint.

Say for example I'm designing a prototype that will be epoxy powder coated white. I know from the specification of the paint that its total reflectance is for example 80% and that say 10% of this will be specular. Lets ignore the roughness aspect for a moment and consider setting this material up in the Beta: Plastic, diffuse 0,0,184. specular 0,0,20. How did I arrive at this? Well, 80% of 255 is 204, and 10% of that is 20. Now the total of diffuse + specular should't exceed 204 so the diffuse component must equal the total minus the specular, or 204-20=184.

Now the same thing in V1. Create a two layer bsdf, set 1 to lambert, reflection 0,0,184, weight 90. Set the other layer to 0 roughness (we're ignoring roughness remember) reflection 0,0,20, weight 10. No thats not right, the specular component isn't visible. What about setting the lambert layer to 0,0,255, weight 72 (90% of 80%) and the other layer set to 0,0,72 (255/(28 / 8 ) weight 28. Much closer, but what about if I..... and so on and so forth.

You see I don't see how the material values relate to real material values, am I on the right track? Please tell me, I just don't know.

There was also talk of using maxwell as a lighting analysis tool a while back, has that been shelved? I ask because accurate lighting analysis requires setting materials with real world behaviour. Maybe the 'material info' button will fill the role, eh?

[Mihai]

That's a good point Hugh but I want to go even further than those tables you linked to, because I can't accept such a simple description of a material. Many materials don't have 80% 'diffuse' and 20% 'specular' from every angle you are observing them. Many change color also with angle, this must be taken into consideration as well.

This is where bsdf measurements come into play, which (I think) specify in a much more accurate and flexible way what a surface looks like. It says how much light is scattered at different angles.

Since Maxwell already has a solid foundation in approaching materials from a real life perspective, we can even now use complex ior files for example, it would be great if we can in the future have "ready made" custom bsdf measurements of different plastics and composite materials.

[Mihai]

Added the stuff about nd...

[Rochr]

...as easy as taking a photo...yeah, right...