Attached Link: http://www.des-web.net/shoestring_graphics.html

Announcing Shoestring Shaders, the first product from Shoestring Graphics! Available for immediate evaluation and purchase. http://www.des-web.net/shoestring_graphics.html Iridescent Ok, so its not REAL iridescence. . . this shader works by comparing the angle of a surface normal with the angle of a light striking it. Whats it good for? It adds a real spark to crystal shaders, especially animations. Pearl shaders too. Actually, it is more generic than that. There are two targetting modes. The first is to point at another object in the scene. The main use of this mode is to point at a light (making the assumption that the light is pointed at the object being shaded). The second is a fixed orientation that is useful for distant lights (just copy the pich and yaw fields). Grayscale/Desaturate The purpose of this shader component is to control color saturation. Useful on texture maps, of course, but can also be used on procedural shaders that are a bit too hot (or a bit too cool, for that matter). Great for tuning up those Poser textures without having to leave Cararra. There are two modes, Grayscale, which does a simple luminance preserving conversion, and Saturation control, which lets you control the overall color saturation, and also lets you manipulate the saturation levels of R, G, and B independently. Both overall and independent saturation controls can be used at the same time. Supermixer Supermixer lets you combine a bunch of shaders in two ways. The simple mode is an add- it just adds all the shaders together. Useful if you want to combine multiple masks. The more powerful mode lets you combine multiple shaders based on the grayscale values of a control shader. Sort of a super gradient- instead of just colors, you can mix shaders, and instead of simple left to right or radial type options, you can use any shader to set the control ranges. You can have arbitrary mixes of up to ten shaders across any object- with controlled blending. Kind of like UV mapping- only you paint your UV map with grayscale values, and then use it to mix whatever shaders you want- including procedurals. Weave Ever wanted to do an over-under pattern? Weave is the shader for you! Five threads in the U direction, five threads in the V direction- you choose what goes over, what goes under, what each thread looks like, whether or not they are shaded to simulate depth. Works in the bump channel! Also has options for mask output, to allow easy use in the transparency channel. Distortion control shaders add a little randomness (or a lot, if you are into the 60s psychedelic thing) Markd

sounds very interesting!

Take a look- give them a try! ;-) Markd

As a Mac user I can just look on from the sidelines... but I do appreciate that you mentioned the PC-only nature of the product up front. I know not to get too excited :-). It's nice to see a new developer contributing to the Carrara community. What's good for Carrara is good for all who have sprung for it.

I wish I could offer it to all comers- if I get access to a Mac and the toolset, or lots of people buy the shaders and I have to get a big write off (hint hint ;-), I'll try to support Mac. Markd

Looks interesting - I've just downloaded the trial. Iridescent looks very nice, and I suspect that SuperMix offers some interesting possibilities that are probably a bit beyond my current state of knowledge as a complete newbie. Weave amazed me - sounds second simplest after Desaturate, but that interface is something else! As you said yourself, the engineer in you surfaced a bit there.

Sorry! If you leave it in basic mode it is a little easier. I plan to have more presets available too, as soon as I get done doing the taxes. Comes from not wanting to limit what you can do with the shader- makes for a bit more learning curve, but I think more value overall. BTW, you also get pinstripes out of weave if you only populate one direction. ;-) Good for grills, esp with 3d and transmap options. Markd

Thanks for the Weave tip Mark. And I completely agree with your comment re the controls - without them you automatically lose the associated flexibility. It was just a surprise seeing so many on what intuitively I expected to be a very simple shader. (Not that I can talk - you should see the plethora of controls and actions in my custom-built entomological recording database. About 150 on the main form alone, with almost every data field having a double-click action associated, and even some of the labels do too for lack of screen space at 640x480 when it was originally written! Imagine how many I could have now with 1600x1200 to play with...)