Materials

Yeah... Practice, practice, practice!

Sure, Darktree has quite a few more options, but AM's editor is no slouch - not by a long shot. The draw back is that to get to really know how to make the best use of it, you have to commit yourself to it for an extended period of time. I used to set aside 1-2 days each month to do nothing but work with the Material Editor - a habit I unfortunately haven't followed the last couple of years.

The benefit that comes from this type of "practice" is huge. The drawback is that in order to really gain any insight is that you have to render after nearly every change you make to a material. This is what makes it so time consuming, but in my experience, the knowledge gained is worth it.

For example, someone was asking yesterday about creating "planet" materials. It's been years since I've done that kind of experimentation in AM, all the way back to v3, but I know that the editor hasn't changed so much that I couldn't get a good start immediately because I have a pretty good idea of how to use the Checker combiner as a base from which to generate land and sea. I have a pretty good understanding of how the Checker options affect and object, and I've played with the different Turbulences and their settings so that I know how to adjust the Scale, Amplitude and Octaves. I would hazard a guess that I could create a basic planet material with land masses and oceans in about 15min.

That knowledge comes from many hours spent just making & observing changes to a material's various options/settings. As far as an object(s) to view that materials on, I constructed a set of common geomatric shapes: cube, sphere, cylinder, cone, pyramid, torus and plane. Each of these was centered at 0,0,0 in the modeling window and then all dropped into a choreography with the objects all placed on top of the plane. This gave me a render of the material as applied to different surfaces. They are also great for seeing how Projection Maps wrap onto an object. Try each kind of Projection Map, Spherical, Planar and Cylindrical to each shape and observe how it wraps.

Of course, the more complex your materials are, the longer your images/animations will take to render. For the most part, render time shouldn't never be a concern if it's going to compromise your image quality, (and, yes, I apply that to the production environments also!) but it's very important to know if various parts of your material tree are even showing up and if the material would look radically different if those areas of the materail tree were removed. They way I generally test this is to change one of the color attributes to some very hot, saturated color so I can see where, or if, it appears.

Getting intimate with AM's Material Editor is almost always exceedingly tedious/boring and is ALWAYS time consuming, but I've never walked away from a session with it feeling like I wasted any time.

Michael S. Flynn

You can achieve this with a gradient and edge threshold nest one gradient into the other.

The edge threshold should be at about 45 or 30. The translate and scales should all be set to 0 in the properties box. It would go like this:

gradient1: edge threshold 80
        -attrib:white  100%ambient
        -gradient2: edge threshold 50
                 -attrib:red 100%ambient
                 -attrib:red  100%transparent 100%ambient

This will give you a transparent red glow like edge with a white core. I hope this helps.

JoeCosman

• Create new material
• Create new action for model you want to fade
• Drag material attribute into action window

  [-] Materials
      [-] Material1
          [ ] Attribute   <---DRAG THIS! into action window!!!
  

  This will open a material attribute channel under action1 in the PWS.
• Click on the Transparency item in the properties panel. This will cause a transparency channel to open under Material attribute and should look like this:

   
  [-] Actions
      [-] Action1
          [ ] Material Attribute
              [ ] Transparency
  

• Single click on the [ ]Transparency channel and look at the property panel. You will see the box in the property panel where you can change the value of the transparency.
• While the action window is displayed and active go to frame 0 and enter a value into the properties panel (0 for opaque or 100 for transparent. I'll use 0 to start out opaque)
• Decide how long the transition should take (I'll use 3 sec)
• Goto frame 90 (for 3 sec) and enter a value in the property panel (I'll use 100 for total transarancy)
• Apply the material to your object
• Place your model into the choreography.
• Apply the action to the shortcut to model.
• Render to file and watch your creation Fade/Appear.

-Starling Brown

As of v8, yes, you can. Prior to v8, this was not possible, unless you used the Darktree Simbiont plugin.

In A:M 2000, you can just drag another instance of your material onto your model and set a bump amount in its properties panel.

Also, don't underestimate the power of the crumple and dent texture plugins. Nearly every material I make has at least one dent attribute in it.

Brian "balistic" Prince

You do get bump with a Darktree texture (if desired and turned on) no displacement with DT.

No displacement in Hash's projection maps, either, only in decals.

And in decals you need a rather dense mesh, because AM subdivides each patch into 64 on the fly, it's rather CPU intensive, too.

Jeff Cantin

It is easy! Just put a volumetric shadow casting klieg at the top facing down, and one flat patch (light gel) in front of it. Assign a semi-transparent turbulent texture to the gel patch, animate the texture and that's it. Perlin texture works best, I think. Hope you find it useful ...

Sotirios Gougousis

Select your sphere and look at the pivot's xyz values, copy those into the corresponding *off-sets* in the shortcut to the material. At least this will get you roughly started, tweak as needed, and play with scale and other attributes once you have centered the material to your sphere.

All proceedurial materials assume a 0,0,0 center point and expand into 3d space from there. Some proceedurals will require this type of adjustment, and AM has made provisions for it with the off-set type in boxes. If you move the mesh in the model window, move the off-sets to match, usually the pivot of the selected mesh is very close to it's center.

Jeff Cantin

Platinum etc are not just "colours" they are surface properties - in this case they are all metallic - which implies that they have some reflectivity - which also means they need something else present in the scene to reflect. You need to consider issues such as the reflectivity, specular brightness, specular size and specular colour, as well as the basic colour of the object. The chapter on texturing in the AM manual repays close study, as it discusses these issues! ( You may also be interested to note that in general, objects made of materials which are electrical insulators tend to have specular highlights coloured towards the colour of the illuminating light, whereas electrically conductive materials have specular highlights which are the same as the objects base colour!)

Dave Corcoran

Here's a tip from TinCan's Workshop on Cylindrical Projection Mapping.

Make a new material, change the attribute to plug-in, hash, projection, then select Cylindrical with the radio button. Add a test image. I use an image of a colored grid where all the squares are pink in the first column, and lt blue in the next, and so on. I make special marks in the top row as well as the first column, so I know what I'm looking at after it is applied. Keep this map handy for positioning other decals too!

______________~
|*|*|*|*|*|*| ~       Placement.TGA
------------- ~
|*| | | | | | ~  * = special marker so you know top and start
------------- ~      of the map once applied
|*| | | | | | ~   
------------- ~      If you make the grid with squares 
|*| | | | | | ~      then you can detect any stretching
 P|B
 I|L
 N|U
 K|E

Lathe a cylindar so that it looks like a soda can standing up, group and name it. For starters move the cylindar mesh so that the pivot point is at 0,0,0. (don't move just the pivot...) Apply the material and quick render. Now you can see how the placement.tga decal was applied, this will give you hints on how and where to draw on the real decal that you will substitute later. You can tweak the Y value (CM) on the material property panel if your map is projected to large or too small, make that adjustment now. (The unit is in CM on the prop panel so it may be a good idea to change your model window to display rulers in CM to match).

At this point, you should be fairly happy with the results. Keep tweaking til you are.

Group select the mesh and move the mesh up the Y axis 50 CM and re-render, you should notice the material did *NOT* move with the mesh. Open the prop panel to the *Shortcut* to the material and type in 50 in the y box and re-render. Ah, everything kewl once again. The projection map needs to know the center point of the mesh it's got to cover and you have to give it those numbers yourself.

Quick and easy method - move the mesh anywhere in the model window (render if you want to see whats happening) click on the group name and look at the pivot xyz values, copy those into the corresponding *off-sets* in the shortcut to the material and again everything is kewlio. So remember, move the mesh in the model window, move the off-sets to match.

By the way, once you have the map corectly applied in the model window, it doesn't shift during an action -- it's on there solid! So, open a new action and test this out... Rotate, spin, turn whatever...

Turn the soda can on it's side... Rotate the mesh in the model window so it's now laying down when viewed from a left or right view window. Open the prop panel to the shortcut of the material and change the Aim in the Z from 100 to zero and change the Y from zero to 100, this will reorient the map. The rest of the stuff works the same as above.

If you have gotten down to here and think I don't have time to do this now, save this e-mail... I put all e-mails of interest into a folder for future use - easier than re-asking the same ol questions.

I leave it up to you to figure out what to do if the soda can is laying down flat when viewed from the front view window. LOL

Jeff C.

What you need to do is drag the Shortcut to your material, not the material itself, into the action:

1. apply the material to the model (creating the shortcut)
2. open a new action
3. drag the shortcut to material into the action

   That'll give you access to translate, scale, orient and roll channels for your gradient

   -David

If you want access to every channel the gradient material has, not only drag the shortcut to the material applied to the model, but you can drag the Gradient into the action and drag both Attribute & Attribute2 into the action. Just think of it like this, drag the part that has the things in it's property panel that you want to adjust in an animated material. The shortcut to the applied material allows for translate, scale, orient & roll -- just like on the prop panel for it. While the gradient has start xyz, end xyz, and edge threshold... Each Attribute has what's listed on it's prop panel available as channels in an action.

BTW, they can be draged to the window or the PWS.

Jeff C.

Make a new material and copy the color properties back into it, then you can just drop it onto a group for any future needs. Secondly, if you have two groups that are gonna be colored identically, why don't you just use one group for the color then add any necessary selection named groups underneath with no color properties.

Matt Andersen

Changing the amplitude of a Turbulence node added to a Spherical combiner will cause the rings to mix with each other according to the Tubulence type/scale.

Jeff, Hash, Inc.

A projection map starts at the coordinates 0,0,0 until you move it via the off-sets in the properties panel. So if you modeled a sphere and projection mapped it at 0,0,0 and then moved the mesh in the modeling window you would have to match that movement via the off-sets. To do this easily, group your globe and look at the pivot's x,y,z data and copy those to the appropraite off-set values. However once applied, they act like any other decal in an action, pose or cho. I just did an Earth model last week using this method and it came out great.

Jeff C.

What he could do, is create an animated material, maybe some turbulence, with two 99% transparent materials that have slightly different refraction values. Apply it to a cone and you're set.

Brian "balistic" Prince

Most material options, such as attributes, location, scale, and orientation can be animated. To animate a material, a “Shortcut to” material must be applied to a model. Then right-click (Command-click on Mac) the “Actions” folder in the Project Workspace tree and pick [New][Action] (if you are prompted for a model to use, select the model that contains the material you wish to animate). Finally, drag and drop the attribute that is going to animate (not the “Material” itself) onto the action.

-- Jeff Paries

What I do (to simulate the bizarre shading of Anime eyes, where the specular highlights seem to be lit from the opposite angle of the actual diffuse shading of the pupil) is this:

Create a sphere for the eyeball. Select the CPs of the pupil and -invert- them relative to their intersection with the sphere (so the pupil is a rounded pit, like you broke the end of an egg). Then, add a transparent Cornea over the pupil, matching the original curvature of the sphere. Set is transparency to like 95%, and its Specular Intensity to like 1500%. Add some refraction if you like (although I'm not sure I like how the refraction looks when animated... not that it's not accurate, I just don't like it).

-- Tony

rop them in an action (streak emitter or whatever) and add keyframes to the emission rate, linear interpolation frames 0 -161 emission rate=0, 162-X whatever looks good, X-end emission rate=0. Then you apply the action to the model that has the emittor material applied to it in the choreography.

Matt Andersen

Create a material that has a transparent attribute. Create an action that contains that material. Adjust the material within the action!

Why not just use a decal?

Projection maps are portable.

Planar mapping is a lot like setting up a decal. You need to measure the piece you're applying it to to get the x and y size so that the "stamp" will cover the whole area (repetitons will happen within the boundaries of the "stamp" ), then you need to set up the material info where you dropped it onto a named group, it's set up by default for a forward facing application with the center point of the "stamp" at 0,0,0 you'll need to modify the offsets and the rotation for many situations (if you group the building side or whatever you're applying it to in the model window and get the pivot info this will usually be what you'll need to enter into the offset fields. and Z is forward facing so X will be side facing and Y for tops and bottoms). Hope it helps.

Matt Andersen

Big difference.

Environment mapping simulates reflection. If you don't enable reflection in rendering, you'll get environment mapping too and it won't differ much from spherical projection mapping but turn the reflection on and the enviro mapping comes to live.

I know it sounds a bit silly. Why have enviro mapping to simulate reflection when you have to turn on reflection to render? The answer is enviro mapping give your lonely objects something to reflect apart from itself. A chrome ball with nothing to reflect is well... nothing no matter what amount of reflectivity you bump it up to. So instead of building up an environment for it to reflect, just plonk a bitmap for it to reflect.

sine

Actually, the most promising idea I've thought up on this subject so far would use Premiere, not Photoshop.

My thought is to create a 90 degree camera, mounted from the center point, and tilted upwards at a 45 degree angle. This would cover a square on the "sphere from the camera-point". The center line of this camera would reach directly from the equator to the pole.

Now rotate that camera around the pole of the sphere, in a linear fashion. Each successive frame will have a center-line that shows another slice of the view from the sphere.

Render this out to an AVI. In Premiere I -think- (without having tried) that I can create a Filter-Factory filter that will take out the center lines from each rendered frame, and arrange them side by side on a single image.

That would give you a polar map of the upper hemisphere. Then you just do the same thing for the lower hemisphere. Stitch the two images together, and you -should- have a spherical environment map. Haven't tried it, but I think it will work.

This is by no means an -easy- way to get the effect, but there is the benefit that it will work with pretty much any rendering package. Particularly, I think I can get panoramas out of World Construction Set by doing this, which would be quite helpful.

Anyway, those are my thoughts. I'm sure someone can come up with a better idea....

-- Tony

p.s. Alternately, I think the stitching could be achieved in Photoshop, rather than in Premiere. Photoshop has an option to load a batch of files and successively apply a user-defined action to them, right? You could load all of the .TGAs in sequence, and have your user-action be as follows:

• Select central strip of current TGA
• Copy
• Go to main image window
• Paste
• Move pasted layer to far right of the image.
• Flatten layers
• Select all
• Move the entire image one pixel to the left.
• Lather, rinse, repeat.

Here is how I did something similar :

Step 1 : In the scene I wanted to use as an environment map, I place a fully reflective 1/4 sphere at the place where the object that have to receive the map would be located, the flat side on the floor. I placed an orthographic camera directly above the 1/4 sphere and framed so that I have only the 1/4 sphere visible. I render the scene to a high resolution image.

Step 2 : In another scene, I place the object that need to reflect the environment at the center of a 1/2 sphere with 100% ambiant attribute. I use the previously rendered image as a planar projection map on the 1/2 sphere from above. Render. Voilą!

While the object still needs to be reflective, the ray tracer doesn't have to run through all the objects in the environment. Self reflections are rendered. Also, the reflections are more natural that way than when using environment maps especially when the object or the camera have to move.

Yves Poissant

It's a material attribute...make a new material and change the default attribute to "projection map"

Brian "balistic" Prince

You can create a thumbnail for your material, by opening it and rightclicking the material and selecting edit from the flyout (this opens the material window). Once the material is open, you can choose file/create icon to make a PWS thumbnail of the material (which will save with the material), I don't think there's anyway you can use the whole material window as a thumbnail but just having a color indication in addition to the name makes finding what you're looking for a lot easier.

Matt Andersen

Put a check in the Global Axis box on the material shortcut (on the model).

Personally, I set a transparency of like, 99%, then multiply what I want the specularity to be by 100.

For example, if you set a transparency of 99%, and a specular intensity of 4000, the specular highlights will be the same as if it were transparency 0, specular intensity 40. Or at least that's what it's seemed like in my informal tests.

-- Tony

OK, first off, if you haven't taken a look at the "Toon Eyes" exsplination on the Splindicate, you should go look (www.3dark.com)

Secondly, I would recommend actually modelling a transparent layer around the eye, including the bulge of the cornea. This lets you model the pupil as being set back from the curvature of the eye. Bad ASCII art follows, so look at the following in a fixed-width font:

     __---__
    /      /\
   /      |  \  <---cornea
   | Pupil|  |
   \      |  /
    \__   _\/
       ---

Anyway, the benefit of modeling the pupil curvature opposite to the cornea curvature is that they react to angles of light differently. If you look at eyes (particularly manga and anime eyes, where the effect is accentuated as part of the style), you will notice that (given a standard "light from above") the color shades from dark at the top to bright at the bottom, whereas the specular highlights shade from dark at the bottom to bright at the top.

If you model the eyeball just as a sphere, the best you can do is to fake this effect by adding an ambience map that simulates if for a given lighting setting. If you model the eyeball as a set of two nested spheres, with the outer one being, like 95% transparent, and the inner one having the pupil deformation, you can get the effect at every lighting angle.

Also, a quick note on specularity and transparency. If you set your sphere to 95% transparency and 100% specular intensity, you will get only a very weak highlight. This is because the specular highlight is multiplied by the transparency before being applied. However, you can get around this by using the fact that intensity can be set higher than 100%. If you set your intensity to 2000%, you'll get the same specular bloom that you would on a non-transparent object set at 100% intensity. Tip of the day, or something.

Thirdly, I think that you will be happier with the expressiveness of the character if you add some lower eyelids. They are very important in smiles, as well as other expressions.

Fourthly, it looks like the temples are much too sunken for a normal person. But this may be the look you're going for, if you're modelling off of that cute little mutant in Akira.

Fifthly, I would recommend scanning in some art from an actual Mangas as a rotoscope. I got my hands on a Japanese copy of "Oh my Goddess" which included a page with orthogonal front, side and back views of two of the characters (well, chibi-versions of the characters, anyway). It has proved absolutely invaluable. Look for reference material: it makes life much easier.

-- Tony

In PWS go to the images folder where you'll find all of your images and there you can select the background color.

Peter Tomsson

Opening a material or creating a new one can be really slow waiting for the Material window (sphere on checkerboard) to open. I have had this problem since MH3D and now also with AM98.

BUT, I have found a solution! The problem only occurs when AM uses ALL the screen space! ie. palettes and windows fill the screen. If some desktop is visible, no problem! eg. resize the modelling window and leave some visible desktop, then the Material window pops up immediately!!!

Robert Davidson

I believe the long wait is Hash trying to render the maximized window with the little material sphere in the center. As soon (or before) this window decides to pop up, I usually hit escape key and that tells hash to shrink the window and whack the preview render time for the material way down. On my 8500/200 with gobs of ram, it still takes about 5 seconds to get a new material up. since the material window isn't really accurate, I usually close it as soon as it is done rendering. The progressive render on the actual model is a much better preview IMHO.

Chris

P.S. this is only the case for "materials", large decals can take a long time to load, like B"B"Prince stated

In order to create a good skin shader, you need to know why skin looks the way it does, specifically, you need to realize that much of what one perceives as "skintone" is actually created by structures beneath the skin.

A good way to simulate the translucency of human skin is to use a gradient combiner with no gradient and a finely-tuned edge threshold. This seldom-utilized feature lets areas which aren't facing the camera posess different attributes than the ones that are. I'd recommend using at least two turbulence combiners (one for your frontal skintone, and one for areas perpindicular to the camera plane). Your edge material should have a cooler (blue-er) hue than the one facing the camera.

Moreover, it might be a good idea to give the frontal tone a slight ambience, a technique which can replicate the warm and lively textures Pixar is known for. Specularity can be tricky to deal with when working with human skin (eew!), and unless you're going for either: A - plastic people, or B - greasy people, you should keep the intensity under 10.

Nothing can truly replace well-planned bump, specularity, color, and diffuse maps, but if you're under the gun, a procedural can provide quite adequate results.

The same technique can be used to simulate back lighting of a translucent or furry character. One could even use a second gradient combiner to make the false backlighting diminish as it approached a character's feet. Used on glass materials, the technique can simulate caustics.

Brian "balistic" Prince

I have been playen wif Cylindrical Projection Maps and think I have a handle on it. I spent hours trying to apply a map to a cylinder whose center was not at 0,0,0 until the lil lite went on!

Here's what I found out by trial & error, lotza error...

1. make your cylinder upright, like a tower or soda can
2. create a new material, change it to "Projection Map" and choose your image and click on cylinder (leave the other settings in the panel alone for now)
3. click on the image and select the background color (colour)
4. apply the new material to the cylinder
5. change your model window to "top" view and change the units to Cm
6. guesstimate where the center of your cylinder is (X,Z) and type those numbers into the corresponding offset boxes in the properties panel of the *shortcut* to the material
7. change to a front view and guesstimate the center of your cylinder on the "Y" axis, enter that number into the offset Y box Note: the offset boxes are X,Y,Z from top to bottom
8. do a test quick render (Q) key (on my machine a progressive render for projection maps does not display correctly, YMMV)
9. in step 2 I said leave the other settings alone, now go back to the material properties box (not the shortcut) and you will see you can change the Size of "Y" (the default is 100cm and only cm, that's why I recommended changing to cm earlier). Guesstimate the "Y" size and type in that number & try another quick render, you may find you have to tweak the "Y" offset again in the properties panel of the material *shortcut*.
10. now you should be in the ballpark
11. you can change the map type (color, cookie, bump etc.) and you can make & apply a second material with the same set of numbers to have a color map with a matching bump map.

Note: if you move the cylinder's CPs in the model window you will have to calculate all the numbers again, so, have your model completed before you start applying this type of map.

This concludes todays brain download... Hope you find this data helpful.

Jeff C.

The Wave texture doesn't seem to show up on the preview sphere, for reasons I don't have time to speculate on. However, it works okay on the surface of an object. For example :

Create a cube (or drag it from the Libraries). Make it about 20cm square, and centred on 0, 0, 0 in the modelling window. Change to a nice birdseye view in which you can see the top of it and a couple of sides (it won't work from a Top view, nor will it look good in any view where you're not at a reasonable angle to the surface - reasonable being left as an exercise for the reader).

Create a new Material. Close that Material preview window.

Make the attribute a Wave. Set it's properties to:

• Amplitude : 1.00
• Wave Length : 1.00
• Damping : 100.00
• Propagate : 10.00
• Cycle : 10.00

(Some of these are not optimal, but I'm just quickly trying it and I don't have time to test all the parameters - it's my tea-break) Add a new Attribute and give it a nice colour (heck, give it an awful colour if you really must).

Drag and drop it onto the cube model. Quick render in the modelling window. You should have a set of ripples, on all faces of the cube. Tweak to suit your requirements.

Alternatively, for non-circular ripples, you can always use turbulence, scale it about 500% in one direction, and generate a nice bump map.

Myles

Recipe for chrome (high altitude directions):

• Object diffuse color: black or near black
• Diffuse falloff: set it fairly high, between 200 and 500
• Ambience: usually zero
• Specular color: white
• Specular size: medium to small
• Reflectivity 85-95%

this will yield near-photreal chrome...REMEMBER, chrome looks the way it does because of the environment its in...if your environment sucks, so will your chrome...

Brian "balistic" Prince

Jeff Paries straightened me out on 'faking' chrome.

What had confused me is that in AM98, you can set the model's (or group's) 'color and shininess etc, is now available in the Properties Panel. You dont have to make a color material first(as in V5). Cant think why I hadnt spotted this before.(Ie coloring through the Properties Panel)

So make an image to use as an enviroment map. Then make a new material, choose enviroment map as attribute. Then select the model, or just the group that you want to 'chrome', and adjust the specular, reflectivity(just so other models can also be reflected) and apply the new material. then you can get fake chrome.(or whatever) You have to toggle on 'group has color' in the PP.

david

Material effects are like a "zone" of a material, nothing happens or is rendered in this zone until you move a model into it, then the model gets "painted" with the material. You should try an experiement with it to see for yourself. Here's how:

For this example open the torus model and drag it to the cho window. For PC users right click on Choreography1 on the PWS, choose new material effect and *two* new entries will appear on the PWS and a large circle will show in the cho window (this is the "zone" of influence of the material effect). Now open a material like "scales" and drag & drop that onto the PWS item Material Effect1 in the "OBJECTS" section of the PWS.

As you move the model into the zone in the cho window do a render, maybe half the torus will be in the zone and will now render with scales.... as you move the model closer to the center of the material zone more of the torus will be affected. Likewise, when you move the torus away from the zone less or none will be affected.

I hope this example helps make it clear, be brave and try using your own models and materials....

Jeff C.

I think you misunderstand. I used a "material", not a decal. I knew that the sky dome would be huge, and to do it with a decal would be silly. The decal would have to be equally huge and consume all sorts of resources (disk space, load time, render time, etc.) A material is the only way to go for something like this.

It looks distorted in the picture above because the viewpoint is from the camera, and the dome is wrapping around you. If I pull the camera back as far as I can (so that's its back is against the "wall") and use a longer focal length lens (like 80 or 100 or more) the sky will flatten out.

Mike Caputo

erm, not to start a war here, but I use mapped skies all the time...I think the biggest map I've used is about 2000x2000, not terribly huge...and since the sky should always be set as far as possible from the scene (unless you're going for the "really close clouds" look) it will almost never pixelate...

and if you're using Photopaint, you can even distort the texture so that it maps correctly onto a hemisphere...

until Hash implements shaded volumetrics, I think decaled hemispheres and planes are the way to go for clouds...

Brian "balistic" Prince

In this scene, I had to fly around a building at very close range (maybe 50 imaginary feet off the building) then follow a glowing "data line" to another building about 3 imaginary miles away, then pull back and up into the sky to a really high height, so it looks like you're 10 miles up (the linked buildings are just dots).

I figured I had to do all this inside a huge sphere, and the sphere would have to big enough to accomodate the camera pull back.

The sky material I made came out Ok, and covered the entire sphere.

Could I have done this with a decal? I didn't think a decal would hold up -- when you're up close on the buildings, you're seeing a very small portion of the sky dome, and it's filling the screen.

Mike Caputo

One more cool thing. Turbulence is now available for combiner materials and lights. To add to a light, jump to the light data, right click & select add turbulence. Also select volumetric in the light property page. The default values for scale need to be raised up to get a good effect. For the material you create a materail like checker, right click on the checker in the list and select add turbulence.

Yes. What you have to do is drop the attribute into an action, in the project workspace, then you can channel all of the material properties.

Matt Andersen

Create a new Material and select an attribute for it. Drag the Material onto your Model. Create a new Action. Drag the Material's Attribute onto the new action. Click on the shortcut to the Material in Action and a list shows up in the Property Window with boxes to check for things you want to affect over time in a Channel. When you select an item, a box to the right allows you to enter a value that is the starting point when you go to the channel. Every time you select an item from the list, it becomes part of the Material shortcut tree in Action.

To adjust the settings in the Channels, just double-click on anything in the Material shortcut tree in Action and the Channel window for that item pops up.

Michael S. Flynn

Make an action, expand the material window to show the Attribute you'd like to animate. Set the current attribute properties, and drag it onto the action window. Advance to frame 30, change the properties, and drag and drop it again....

Ian

As far as the texturing goes in general. I think I've learned a few things in my experience that might help you. I'm just going to address the hair issue for now. If this doesn't help you perhaps it may be news to others on the list.

Hair

First tip: Create the hair in layers. Basically what you might want to do is start with a base of hair(like what you already have). Paint texture maps for those. Then create an inner layer and an outer layer of hair that weaves in and throughout the base. Just think Roger Reynolds' Tree tutorial from 3D Artist magazine. Unlike Roger's tutorial however, it's important that the layers move in and out as well as with(where appropriate) the base hair. Also see Rijk Lau's site for some inspiration on this as well.

Second tip: Use cookie cut maps to get strand separations in the hair. I'm sure this will seem obvious. What might not be, though, is that you should try this in combination with other maps, esp. transparent ones. Why transparent? Because sometimes it's difficult to get a nice soft strand of hair instead of a jagged pixelated piece with just a straight cookie cut(because of resolution, etc.). Transparency maps by themselves can cause strange things too but in combination they work great.

Last tip: Really become a hair designer. Make the texture maps you design flow with the part in the hair and any all separations in the strands. This can make the difference between hair that looks smashed onto a person's head vs. nice flowing hair(cropped or otherwise).

I know this approach will work and can get you great results. If you don't believe it just take a look at the Craver character made for those Honeycomb commercials by Topix. Those guys have Softimage for animating but they texture mapped all of Craver's hair. The technique's they used are not that far removed.

Chris Nakata

I've had a few comments on this, so I'll clarify it now.

To make the sphere in the materials preview bigger, zoom in on it. To move the default lighting, click in the window and drag.

You currently can not change the background.

Jeff, Hash, Inc.

Patches are infinitely thin. There is no way to decal one side of a patch and not have it show on the other. The workaround is to either make a separate patch to cover the reverse of the decaled patch, or extrude the patch slightly to achieve the same end.

I had to make one of our company's products, a box of anti-static screen wipes, and decal the sides with the packaging graphics. I used the extrusion method, extruding the patch .01. This worked just fine, rendered well and was no more diffucult to manipulate than a single layer patch.

Ted Dillenkofer

FRONT PROJECTION MAPPING: Where an image is 'beamed' from the camera position onto objects that have properties checked to receive a projection map. Make one of these suckers by importing a rotoscope to a camera and checking its front projection map property. This is currently the quickest way to get your Hash characters into the real world locations, shadows/reflections n'all.

ENVIRONMENT MAPPING: Maps a 'pretend' reflection onto objects to save you building huge stage set that your viewer may never fully see or save render time by not having to trace real reflections, ie.

- close up on some ones eye where you see a reflection of what their looking at

- metallic (dare I say chrome) objects that are not in the viewers prime focus, buttons, buckels, glasses and knobs.

- flooded rain forest scenes where the surface water ripples reflect the forest canopy

Environment mapping is added through material attributes, right click on one in the project work space and select Import Environment Map. v5.21 and v5.22 both, I think, had options for flat, cylindrical and spherical... This should get REAL powerful once they're working correctly, as you should be able to embed environment maps in complex material binary tree combinations!

PROJECTION MAPPING: Allows flat, cylindrical and spherical maps to be applied to your model surface. Strictly speaking these are not in Hash yet, environment mapping is close, IF the Hash folks add the ability to lock the 'reflections' to the model surface, this would work real nice - but I'm sure they have their own plans, Jeff?

Decaling can be a real pain in the mouse with many models, unflatening odd topology shapes and hiding all the decal joins... BUT, decals work great for adding non-extensive areas of detail (fingernails, iris, skin abborations, warts, clothing details, etc) anything that you don't have to really mutilate your whole model shape to get a decal to fit. Decaling allows you to place details where YOU want them. Conventional (flat, cylindrical, spherical) projection mapping (UV) will be great for the overall general skin and surface textures prior to your fine decal work.

TIP OF THE DAY: Learn how to make an alpha channel in your maps and use them when decalling. By feathering the edge transparency of your decal maps if you do have overlapping decals (say you do front, back, left and right) they wont wipe over each other with a nasty visible decal line, similar to a visible panty line but not as aesthetically pleasing ;)

Gary M

I've done a few flasks that look decent, but they're only viewed from a distance (they sit on a shelf in the background). Here's what I did:

Create the basic shape of the jar by sketching 1/2 of the bottle and then lathing it. Then I select about the bottom 1/2 (or so) of the jar and assign the group a color (for some colored liquid), set the transparency to 50 or 60%, and maybe add a little ambiance. Then I select the top of the jar, keep the default gray color and set the transparency to 80 or 90%.

This has worked well for me, maybe it'll work for you. Maybe others could comment on what I'm doing and make suggestions for improvement.

Bob Gruen

Select a camera under a choreography.

Right click > IMPORT ROTOSCOPE > right click ROTO icon > check PROJECTION MAP in properties.

Then check your FRONT PROJECTION TARGET in .CHO model properties if you need to, or don't, to use the ROTO as a background.

Glen

The easiest way that I know of is to make another material that has the proper scaling, and apply that instead.

Once you create a material, it would be tedious to try and scale all of the individual nodes correctly.

Therefore, once you apply the material to an object, if you click on it in the Project Workspace, there is a single scale field on the Properties Panel that allows you to scale the material to the model.

Jeff, Hash, Inc.

first and foremost, you must add a ground plane and turn shadows on. Many people know this technique already, but it is important, and should be mentioned for newcomers. We know that a character is standing on the ground, because it casts a shadow, and the shadow touches the feet of it. The higher above the ground the object is, the further the "feet" on the shadow are from the feet on the character. So, we must add a ground plane and we must turn on shadows, and the character must stand on the ground plane. Then, we apply a planar environment map "though" the camera and on to the object. Then, we create lights in the same position as in the background image. This is vital. A good method of doing this is to match the angle of a shadow that you can see on the background image (a tree or fence etc), with the objects in your scene. Having done this, you must then set your ambience in your ground plane, so that it blends in with the rotoscope, and adjust your lighting (colour and strength) and your ambience on the ground plane, until the plane blends in with the rotoscope, and the lighting on your figure matches the lighting in your rotoscope (ie the quality of colours). Film grain is probably a good bet now - just to break up that nasty computeriness.

Chris Anthony

Set the mats color to blak. And reflectivity (100%). Specular size to quite large and specualr intensity to 100%. 20% ambience.

Here is a reprint of an earlier post (not my own) that i saved:

Someone posted the recipe for chrome, here it is:

• color: white (v7) or black (v6 or prior), no ambient or diffuse
• spec color: white
• spec size: 50-75
• spec intensity: >75
• 90-100% reflectivity

Hmmm....

I would add SOME diffuse shading to chrome. If you don't you will end up with something that looks more like a mirror. Also, take note that an object with 0 diffuse shading will not receive shadows in most renderers (Well, it does receive shadows, but it does not receive the light that would define the edge of a shadow.)

I would try diffuse between 10 and 40% with a grey color. Otherwise it looks great... So long as you have the right environment map.

Joe Laffey

Okay, here's how I made the sunset:

First off, I made two layers of clouds in the form of simple planes. An upper, opaque "sky" layer, and a more whispy lower layer with a transparency map in the shape of, well, clouds :) I used corel texture to generate the 700x700 cloud images I needed, but just about any proceedural texture engine with a "clouds" algorhythm (sp?) would work fine.

Now, the secret to the method lies in the material settings of the sky and clouds. Make them both fully self-illuminating (that is to say, crank the ambience you jive turkey) AND give them big, intense, specular settings. Simply sandwhich an omnidirectional bulb between the two layers of clouds and shaBAM! instant sunset! Add some distant orange fog and a ground plane and you're set. While this works for stills, it looks pretty cheesy when animated because the sky is simply a nearly-horizontal (the planes are actually sloped slightly to avoid a gap in the horizon) plane with a specular highlight on it. I'm thinking it might be possible to make it animate-able if I used a hemisphere for the sky instead of a plane, minimizing the distortion of the highlight when the camera changes elevation.

You can also generate some beautiful effects by putting the light BELOW the lower layer of clouds...they'll glow iridescently just like real clouds at sunset...

Now the other flaw with this method is that if your ground plane is reflective, you get TWO blobs of light on it...not only does the water catch a specular highlight from the omni blub, but it also REFLECTS the highlight on the cloud plane...this effect looks okay on water, since an ocean swell could cause the same illusion, but I'd just assume find a way to eliminate it...

No volumetrics or post-render touch up are involved...it renders very quick and will hopefully be animateable in the near future...if anyone has ideas about how to better this trick, please post them to the list...if we all work together we could probably generate some of the best atmospheres ever seen in Hash...

Brian "balistic" Prince

If I'm understanding what you did, then there may be two ways to make it more effective during animation.

Your ideas of spheres seem doable, because spheres are used for sky effects anyway. Also, two planes could work, but in both cases, spheres and planes, it is the distance from the camera to the objects that will make the real difference.

When the camera moves, the clouds and sun should not move unless you are traveling very, very fast. Just walking, for instance, they should remain basically where they are, just turning like good kids when the camera turns. Spheres should do this if you are always toward the center of the sphere. The problem with spheres is it may distort the cloud maps - you would either have to compensate in the cloud map, or make the sphere very large (and thus very far away from the camera).

Planes should also work, but to avoid movement of the planes looking unrealistic, they would have to be closer to the reality they reflect, that is, very far away.

Both are a problem as you will loose the detail and perspective unless you make them very large, all of which will add to the render time.

The answer is probably in the direction of large spheres, as that will avoid planes that travel a huge distance and force the engine to calculate long rays.

Dan Pisarski

You have to use a sequence of images that are named in incrementing order, like a targa rendering of an animation, i.e. map01,map02,map03, these all have to be kept in a single directory, then you apply the first one and this will define the rect it maps it to, so I don't think they all have to be the same size, it will just smash them into the rect defined by the first application. You go to the sequence tab on the decal you applied, the two most important fields here, of the 5 at the bottom, are start and end, start is usually 1 and end is the last number of the sequence, the wait field defines how long from when the animation starts to when it displays the first map, you can use step to skip even of odd numbers in the sequence and hold will make each image in the sequence be displayed more than once before going to the next highest number. There are also the play modes, stop if selected should make the map disappear in any renderings longer in frames than the image sequence, repeat will start at the lowest image after its gone from lowest to highest and continue looping in this manner, ping-pong will go from 1 to the highest then back down to one then back up and loop like that, hold last just displays the last image forever after its run through the sequence once. Hope that helps.

Matt Andersen

Hmmm....you should probably make a material that conforms to the following:

• Diffuse color: slightly off-white yellow or orange...SLIGHTLY. falloff: not too much
• ambient: I almost always set ambient at zero, but whatever you do, keep it low
• specular color: white white white.
• specular size: anywhere from 50-70
• specular intensity: near the top....70-100
• maybe some half-scaled, roughness with the height set EXTREMELY low...

In a simple attribute, this is probably the closest you'll get to wet teeth...however, if you chose to use some combiners you could probably create a more realistic uneven finish...let me know if you want to see some sample materials or something...

Brian "balistic" Prince

I usually make the texture highly specular and make the specular color a light blue to simulate the reflection of the sky.

ed

I assume you mean reflection. This is a problem if you make the chrome a perfect 100% reflecting mirror. But reality is far from perfect. Even silvered mirrors typically have reflectivities from 88% to 93% while chrome's is given as 62% in a reference book I have. So the trick is to give the chrome an underlying dark grey colour that shows through, making it look more like a 3D object. I also prefer my chrome with a very small amount of noise with both height and scale values of around 0.1.

Rodger Reynolds

With a refraction "1.0" objects act like air. The other end seems to be "2.0". So i made a list like this:

Refraction list:
Aceton	1.26
Air	1.0
Alcohol	1.25
Amorphous Selenium	1.66
Calspar1	1.4
Calspar2	1.33
Carbon Disulfide	1.39
Chromium Oxide	1.63
Copper Oxide	1.63
Crown Glass	1.34
Crystal	1.5
Diamant	1.58
Emerald	1.36
Ethyl Alcohol	1.26
Fluoride	1.3
Fused Quartz	1.32
Glass	1.33
Heaviest Flint Glass	1.47
Heavy Flint Glass	1.39
Ice	1.24
Iodine Crystal	1.7
Lapis Lazuli	1.38
Light Flint Glass	1.37
Liquid Carbon Dioxide	1.17
Polystyrene	1.35
Quartz2	1.35
Quartz1	1.39
Ruby	1.44
Sapphire	1.44
Sodium Chloride 1 (Salt)	1.35
Sodium Chloride 2 (Salt)	1.39
Sugar Solution(80%)	1.33
Sugar Solution(30%)	1.28
Topaz	1.38
Vacuum	1.0
Water (20 C)	1.25
Zinc Crown Glass	1.34

Frank