At the moment we have the Reflective shader or the Default shader to create
reflective surfaces etc. (of course the Water and Glass shaders could be used,too)
Looking at these shaders we see some differences between the two.
Here is a pic to help you remember
[attach=1]
Working a lot with objects and trying to develop satisfying shading solutions
I'd like to see some additions that would improve the possible results,at least
from my point of view.
Ideally the improved shaders should look like this:
[attach=2]
The Default shader as is seems to be optimized for plant models and maybe it
should stay like it is.
Having the additional features in the Refelective shader only would be enough
most likely.
In the above example I've left out the inverse roughness feature,but that's just
my personal preference.Never got an improved result with that feature.
The suggested additions would help creating certain surface effects. Not only for
imported objects,but for terrain sufacing also.
I hope it's something that's easy to integrate.
Would be great to have these features.
Agree, whole heartedly.
I think I agree, but I don't know if more options in a shader makes computing harder, resulting in longer render time. If you're not really using the settings, it might be better to use the simplest possible shader, and extend if necessary. But I don't know the internal workings and burdens.
I,too,don't know if more options make computing harder,but having to use several
other nodes to try to get a hack that mimics the desired effect - if that's possible
at all - seems to make computing not easier anyway.
Oh we neglected caustics/refraction on the glass and would shadow casting ever be a cool feature...
I left things like that out intentionally.Too unlikely to be implemented in any near
future.
Being able to have a bit more control of what is already there could be achieved
with much less effort on Matt's side methinks.
Quote from: j meyer on May 15, 2015, 01:58:11 PM
I left things like that out intentionally.Too unlikely to be implemented in any near
future.
Being able to have a bit more control of what is already there could be achieved
with much less effort on Matt's side methinks.
Yeah, I got that but couldn't resist bumping that thought...sorry man...
No worry man. ;)
Thanks for the suggestions.
In a future version we will definitely add Roughness Function to the Reflective Shader and Glass Shader, and Ray traced reflections in the Default Shader. Probably for TG4.
Some of the exclusions in each shader are deliberate attempts to simplify the shaders so they aren't too daunting at first glance, and different choices were made according to how I anticipated each shader would normally be used. It would help if the image and function links didn't take up so much space in the window. If we can clean up the interface we could add most of these functions, and have more consistency between shaders. There are some I probably won't add though. Controlling the highlight intensity independently of the reflectivity is not physically correct, so I prefer not to make it easy to do that. When the interface is already busy, that's the first thing I want to exclude. But sometimes you really need to control its overall intensity, so there is a single slider for that.
The Default Shader is the only shader where you can attach images directly (without a separate Image Map Shader) because it's focused on texturing UV-mapped objects imported from other apps. But I know this would be useful on many other shaders. We really need a better UI for this purpose to avoid overcrowding other shaders.
Matt
Thanks for that Matt, by and large we're excited by everything y'all bring forth but hey, we gotta dream as we're mostly dreamers.
Thanks for your opinion Matt.