All posts related to V2
#311556
Looking at the pig cop materials, I have one giant comment:

Do not ever, not ever use Skydome to test materials with, without having other objects dominating the reflection environment. If your material has any reflective characteristic at all (all do), using plain skydome obfiscates and conceals surface detail.

The cardinal rule about Maxwell is don't approach photoreal work in a non-photoreal way. This is why you don't use Lamberts: you never see them in the real world, ever. Not one single real-world material you will ever create is a perfect Lambert. Use it and your surface is already fake looking.

Similarly, virtually nowhere are you seeing objects lit 360 degrees by completely uniform light/environment. I can't even THINK of one, because if you lived inside a white sphere, YOU will still block some light and reflect on the object. The uniformity of skydome is only useful if you have a full scene of otherwise contributory objects to cast shadows, block light, show up in reflections, etc. Without them, a material under perfect skydome looks really weird, is misleading, and again, destroys your connection with the real world.

I demonstrated the danger of this in my 1.7 material tutorials, if you want proof.


_Mike
#311559
Never, not ever. They're an option because... well honestly, I don't know. To have a perfect, absolute reference I suppose?

Bottom line: they don't occur in nature. Any Lambert in any scene, anywhere, is fake looking, period, end of story, and has to be, by definition. The real material you're copying is not Lambert, nor has any Lambert component.

With v1.x, even roughness 99 was a universe from Lambert. V2 has a much more linear transition in roughness from 0-100, making 99 juuuusssst shy of Lambert, such that the official recommended upper limit for roughness for real-world materials is between 90-95.


In fact, as I think about it, lighting a scene with pure skydome, using Lambert materials would be about the single worst way to start a Maxwell scene you could muster.


_Mike
By raja
#311561
true, Lamberts don't occur in nature, but its important to have the ideal material mathematics. If you know enough you can stay real. And if you want, you play with surreal (still mathematically real) materials. In other words, X-maxwellish (like X-flow).

regards,
raja
mverta wrote:Never, not ever. They're an option because... well honestly, I don't know. To have a perfect, absolute reference I suppose?

Bottom line: they don't occur in nature. Any Lambert in any scene, anywhere, is fake looking, period, end of story, and has to be, by definition. The real material you're copying is not Lambert, nor has any Lambert component.

With v1.x, even roughness 99 was a universe from Lambert. V2 has a much more linear transition in roughness from 0-100, making 99 juuuusssst shy of Lambert, such that the official recommended upper limit for roughness for real-world materials is between 90-95.


_Mike
Last edited by raja on Mon Oct 12, 2009 8:17 pm, edited 1 time in total.
#311563
"If you know enough you can stay real"? Well, if you know not to use Lamberts you can stay real, anyway.

Naturally, if you're not doing photoreal work, it doesn't matter what you do. 99% of the users are trying to replicate common, everyday materials. Even real, exotic materials still don't have Lambert components to them. And do not believe that you can quietly incorporate totally non-photoreal elements to your materials and somehow end up totally photoreal on the other side. A moment's consideration will yield that this is impossible. Sweat the small stuff. Sweat the big stuff. If you're making a material anybody has ever seen with their eyes before, don't use Lamberts.


_Mike
By raja
#311571
ok mike :D,

so, you stay off Lamberts and you are real enough. good to know, thanks.
also, for the video on think site.

tests:

does it work?
Image

does it work with textured materials?
Image

regards,
raja
#311583
michael R2D2 verta, take a deep breath! i forgot to mention i used hdri for illumination, but unplugged it from the scene i sent you earlier to cut down on size.... i would never do such the hideous crime you mention. nonetheless, i enjoyed the skydome lecture. thanks for the reminder........ any suggestions on the mats themselves? let it out mike, just let it out.....
  • 1
  • 19
  • 20
  • 21
  • 22
  • 23
  • 58
render engines and Maxwell

"prompt, edit, prompt" How will an AI r[…]