Materials Laboratory - "Lava Skin" Options

[aaver]

In this thread Bill Woelbeling made a request for a "Lava Skin" material:

[aaver]

I made some experiments with this material. Please tell us which is closer to what you need, Bill.

Attached image(s)

 

[wwoelbel]

Morning Anders;

Yep... I should have posted this in a seperate thread so that everything is linked up. The texture image that I posted is indeed what I am looking for but I am also very open to expanding my vision by seeing other peoples interpretation. There are a couple of problems in the original that I posted. The veins appear to be ontop of the flesh. I really wanted them to appear below the skin. I see the flesh as being fairly smooth. I am trying to convey the natural realm of the demon being in fire, molten rock, explosions, the smell of burnt flesh and sulphur.

Could you repost your material here and perhaps a brief explanation of the technique you used to create it?

Bill

[KenH]

Wow...they all look great. I thought you needed darktree etc for such materials.

[aaver]

Morning Bill!
Not that early here in Sweden though

[aaver]

Here is the project file.

Attached File(s)

 aaver_LavaSkinMat01.zip ( 4.22k ) Number of downloads: 259

 

[pixelmech]

Just to clarify - the Materials Lab isn't a "competition" per se. Anders, since you grabbed Lava Skin and have begun it, go ahead and tweak it with Bill until you guys decide you have the desired material.

Other people are welcome to come in and comment and make suggestions - in fact that is the point to get the best material available. But since Anders has started this thread, he should make all the changes to the material IMO - so we end up with one (or maybe a couple versions) mat file.

Then walk us through the settings and how you built it so we can learn how from it and upload the final file so I can save it.

Thanks for stepping in and helping!

Tom

[ZPiDER]

the main problem i see is the "straightness" of the veination.
i dont quite know how to overcome this without third party plugins.

the only way i've found to create veins is a high "amplitude" setting on cellturb set to "hard edge".

one can turn off the "euclidian distance", which looks somewhat less regular, but still not quite as natural als bills reference pic, plus it will create dark blobs on some of the areas.

adding turbulences to a turb combiner is not possible either ..

any ideas?

[aaver]

[wwoelbel]

Anders - Morning is a state of mind more than a time of day

See... Whats really funny is that, of the three material renders you posted, the one closest to what I asked for is the one that interests me the least. The left-most is too bright. The right-most one is fascinating. I'll pull the project file and prowl around in it. I would welcome others to take a whack at it or see if (like me) you can make a franken-material by tinkering with Anders' original.

Bill

p.s. Yepper. I should have opened the thread for "discussion" and development instead of leaving it in the main thread. My bad.

[wwoelbel]

Marcel -

Getting good veins is really rough. In DarkTree, there is a veination combiner which produces results similar to a cellturb. Not quite like the veins in human skin but more like the blush pattern on a fair skinned persons cheeks after a bit of exercise outside on a cold day.

Of course, an unwritten goal here is to use as native a solution as is possible. As you may or may not know, there is a problem with DT and the new V12 release.

I would be very interested in a discussion on creating a realistic human skin vein pattern (without using decals)

[KenH]

As far as I can make out, the middle material is exactly like the posted image. IMO Anders has achieve his objective of duplicating it.

[cfree68f]

Awesome looking so far Anders. I'm going to work on one today. Keep going though. I'm liking everything I see. Maybe we should change the name of the thread to pyroclastic plastic!

very cool stuff.

C

[pixelmech]

[ZPiDER]

would "creating a plugin and donating it to be included with a:m" count as an approach?
i dont say i have a solution for the pesky vein problem, but sometimes little things can be a big help, like my BrightnessContrast plugin that allows to "tweak" a finished texture.

just add it after your existing attributes and tweak away.

Attached File(s)

 bc.atx ( 24k ) Number of downloads: 72

 

[Paul Forwood]

[KenH]

Um...what's the "Hash /extended fractal sum turbulance plugin? The project asks for it.

[cfree68f]

Pixelmech and all. I have the solution for neatness.

Notice in my skin thread that all of the stuff related to my material resides in that first post. Tutorial, project.. images.. yada yada. If someone adds another skin shader.. they can add it to the thread.. but keep all changes and additions in the post they create. Then.. I can go back to my initial post and add "Aternative Links to their endevours" That way someone coming to the thread for a first time will be able to access all the possible skin shaders in that thread from the very first post. If they want to add comments then they can just add to the thread..

Personally I'd like to see 16 different materials on each thread. All linked from the first post and self contained within their initial post.

What should probably be done is that every person starting a Material Laboratory thread.. should also link my starter project from the first post along with their version, and probably a link to the instructions on how they should add to the process.

Does any of this make sense? I think this is the best way to get every one to play in the same ball park and keep the thread count to a manageable number. I would't want to see 15 different skin shader threads.. Thats the weakness of this forum as it is. All pertinant information to a specific thread should be contained within that thread. That makes it a powerfull resource indeed.

C

[aaver]

[pixelmech]

Colin - your advice sounds reasonable to me. The way you did that first post was perfect! The tutorial is completely awesome. This is what we need for each material created because it accomplishes a number of things:

1. It gives the community a good, free material.
2. It teaches people how to make a material, which I see as MOST important, especially due to the lack of good documentation for AM.
3. It is well organized and you didn't have to hunt through multiple threads OR posts to get the information you needed.

Now we have a few problems:

1. This discussion is happening WITHIN a lab thread, where nobody will see it
2. We need buy in from the community on the process
3. We need some 'official' help

I really think we need a PINNED thread somewhere, maybe in WIP maybe somewhere else, that explains the Materials Laboratory, with Colin's first one as the prototype, and a second post explaining it all.

I think if we have that, then we've really got something. I'll volunteer to collect all finished files and have a page on my web site for them, where the pinned thread can link to.

But we need some moderator help if we are going to do that...(me looks around hopefully)

Does that sound good Colin...everyone...

[pixelmech]

One thing I'd say about the plug-ins too - a lot of us don't understand how they are used or how they fit into materials making. Turbulence and so forth, this stuff needs to be explained - even if briefly - in your summary/tutorial of your material.

[wwoelbel]

Indeed! The center material is pretty much an exact duplicate of what I asked for. Could I ask you, Anders, to take a minute and tell me your thought process in how you went about building the material? For example, you looked at the image provided and saw what? Did you see the mottled red-orange background? If so, how did you go about producing it?

I don't want to consider this "request" complete as I know that Colin wants to take a whack at it. But given the responses to this first crack, I would think that we can open the purple plastic thread? Tom? Is that one yours?

Marcel (and Anders) - Design of a new plugin is a perfectly valid solution. Now, I would discourage the use of anything that has to be paid for (DT is only semi-free). The coolest would be to open your source for the plugin so that it can live by itself.

Bill

Editors note - I will compile this thread at its completion into a PDF document with attachements of materials and associated tid-bits.

[pixelmech]

The purple material was not a material per-se it was really just a color and one setting. Not a big thing, I'd rather see 'real" materials made.

We definitely need an explanation like Colin did for his for this one. I don't see a problem having both Anders and Colin's version of lava skin as long as they both complete the process we're trying to lay out.

So, really it should be up the the author of the material to build the files and instructions, since they built it - just like Colin did.

T

[KenH]

It all sounds like alot of effort. I hope you get the participation.

[cfree68f]

[aaver]

[cfree68f]

Ok.. I had fun on this one. Here is my version. It got pretty complicated.. But renders faster than my othe skin shader. I didn't go 100 percent with the pic Bill gave. I sort of interpreted it. Here is the project....

Demon Skin project

It has 3 versions of the skin color and one bump. Just drop whicever Skin color you want on your model and drop the bump on as well.

Here are some pics.



As you can see it could use some tweeking.

Because of the complexity.. let me know if you guys want the "How to" on this one. If Ander's is the Demon Skin Mat.. I'll save the tute on this one till some other time.

C

[aaver]

Really Great stuff, Colin! Much better than mine!!

(The attached project file is the Default Mat)

[ZPiDER]

[Paul Forwood]

Anders and Colin, you guys are shining lights!

I am learning alot of things that have been confusing me for ages.
Bravo!!!

Anders, as well as producing an excellent tutorial for your material you are demonstrating an excellent command of the English language. Far better than many who post here from English speaking countries!

Thanks for the enthusiasm and willingness to educate, guys.

[wwoelbel]

WOW!

The results are fantastic. We have several flavors of demonic lava-skin as well as knowledge (remember the pharaphrased old saying "Give a guy a fish and he has dinner. Teach him to fish and he won't pester you for free fish any more").

I understand the problem that true professionals can have explaining the process that they use to accomplish a task in their field. Things that the novice must consciously concentrate on to perform or observe has become an unconscious process for the professional. Often, the answer to the question "How did you do that?" is "Its easy, you just do it".

My thanks to all of the participants in the first, very successfull, material laboratory.

(The thread is not closed. Anyone with questions or even alternate solutions should feel free to tag onto this thread)

Thanks folks!

Bill

[pixelmech]

Colin, I would love to see a How-to on this one! I really think we need it on all of em

[ZPiDER]

wouldnt it be better to have a separate forum for the "material workshop" ?
it seems to me that these valuable ressources will get lost soon in the busy wip forum ..

another lil plugin to help you with textures:

LIMIT has 3 parameters: min, max and transfer.

basically it clips the color at a min and a max value of an existing texture.
keep in mind, that a:m internally handles negative colors as well as colors brighter than your monitor can display, so a max limit of 100% does make sense.
especially in combination with the "transfer" propery of this texture:

a very bright (1000%), pure yellow will normally still show up as yellow in the render (shadows will affect it much less though).
when you have transfer set to ON, this very bright yellow will show as white which is more what the human eye would expect to see.

Attached File(s)

 limit.atx ( 24k ) Number of downloads: 47

 

[cfree68f]

[pixelmech]

[cfree68f]

We could ask Martin and Steve? Just send them an email with the links to what we've done so far.

They'd want a moderator. I'd do it but I'm slammed with work as it is.

I'll send a note and see what I hear back.

C

[pixelmech]

Thanks Colin, you can let them know that I will volunteer to moderate if they will have me.

Tom

[Nicholas8681]

Hey! Look at that;)

[aaver]