I ran into an old thread asking about Predator style semi-invisibility yesterday and wound up spending most of last night and this morning mucking about trying to come up with something. The idea I had was easy enough but it took a lot of mucking about before I had something I was happy with. Here's an example of how it renders.

Here's a screenshot of the node layout so you can duplicate it if you want.

And here he is walking into a very slimy place. These slime encrusted walls have been another shader project of mine. Gotta love slime.

damn!!that last image looks great,I love that slime encrusted wall..what about the particles in the air,how have you done that? -Stef

Very good work, I love it. I know those nodes in P5 can accomplish lots of cool things, but there is no way I will ever be able to figure it out myself. Thanks to you and all who can do this :)

And if you want to share that slime with us, I'm sure we wouldn't mind.... ;)

I really should put together a package of materials for free stuff. I just never feel like I've finished making things to go in one. Stef, those things that look like particles in the air are actually just spots of slime on the walls and ceiling. The way I set up the slime means that it never quite gives way to cement completely. The ratio of cement to slime reaches a maximum and stops there. Hang on a mo and I'll see if I can do a screenshot of the slime nodes.

Here we go. The central driver to all of this is the P node down in the bottom right corner. I have the x and z contributions set to zero, so basically this node is telling the material how far up the wall we are. You would use something like this for any altitude dependant material. As it feeds into later nodes, I use the value of this P node to decide how much of the material is slime and how much is concrete. However, I don't want the slime to peter out at exactly the same place on every column, so I've added some large scale turbulence (Tubulence_2) to the P output (added together with Math_Functions_3). I then use Math_Funcitons_2 to subtract 2 from the result. This just means that the switch from slime to cement is going to happen two units higher up the wall. Now that I've finished preparing my height measurement value, I use it to drive the Bias of a clouds node. This means that the bias increases with height, so the cloud density increases with height (or does it decrease with height? I can't remember). It's hard to see what's going on with these things until you render, so you have to have a good mental picture of what all of it is doing. Anyhow, the output from the clouds node is what I'm going to use to set the blending level between my cement and my slime, so this is a key point in the whole process. You can see the output of the clouds node goes to three blenders - one for the diffuse colour, one for the ambience (I like my slime to have little glowing patches) and one for displacement and specularity. I could drive all of those with one blender but by splitting them up I give myself a little more control of each area. The cement is a single node material (Granite, top right). The slime is made with basically two nodes, Turbulence and ColorRamp. You can see the Cement and slime are mixed for the diffusion chanel by the Blender node at the top left, with the amount of mixing controlled by the Clouds node. To drive displacement and highlight size, I've done exactly the same thing with Blender_2, except that since I don't want much displacement for the cement, I've set the colour of Blender_2's Input_1 to a dark grey which will keep the displacement down very low. It's like multiplying the granite displacement by 0.03. Also, since we don't need colour for displacement, I've just taken the turbulence straight to the blender without passing it through the ColorRamp. To drive the ambience it's the same thing again with Blender_3 except that since I don't want any ambience at all from the cement, I've just set Input_1 to black and left it at that. Also, since I don't want too much ambience from the slime, I've passed the slime's Turbulence node through a power math function. This darkens the whole thing, but still leaves a few very bright spots. That's pretty much it. The key stuff is the Clouds node and everything below it.

Incredible! How do you figure this stuff out? You lost me at "Here we go", but that is ok. I am going to save this thread and refer to the pictures and what you wrote. Someday it may click, but don't hold your breath. You did a great job and thanks so much for posting this info. This node stuff is along the same lines of the Bryce material editor which I never understood either. Thanks!

WOOT!! Thanks!! And yeah.. Gotta love slime! Your slime-coloums are awesome! At first I thought you had made it with Meta Forms but now I realize it's really "only" displacement! Awesome!

This is really cool. Thanks a lot for sharing!

AJAX!! That slime is not just good. it GREAT! Just tried it and... WOW!! THANKS!!

Gross but awesome!

Thank you, Ajax. Your shaders are awesome. I'm still really chuffed to bits with the water shader you created.

Mmmmm...yum. That looks really evil, Treckie. Glady you're having a good time with it :-) Actually I did use a litte metaforms. This pic shows the metaforms bit in green. I needed it to get the floor from being too level and to get the buildup at the bases of the columns and bars. If we change the colours this could make some good War of the Worlds red weed. Or some really gross monster vomit - I just need to figure out how to put chunks of carrot in there. Shouldn't be too hard :-> Weezie, I never did figure out the Bryce material editor, but this P5 node thing works for me. I'm a mathematician, so when I came to 3D I already had most of the terminology. That helps a lot. It also means I'm used to mentally picturing how a multidimensional value field is shaped, which is the big thing I find I need for this node material stuff. If you can imagine what's happening to an invisible parameter in all parts of three dimensional space, even though you only ever actually see 2D slices of it, then it makes this stuff a lot easier. That's what I find, anyhow. I can see this node stuff is not for everybody. I have to admit I was a little scared of it when I started. I love it now though.

Heya SamTherapy. You're welcome - glad you found the water useful. I saw you did a really cool pic with it. I really must put together a package of these things for free stuff soon. I should add a couple of rendering notes for these materials: For the Predator camo, you need raytracing turned on with about 8-10 raytrace bounces. You can turn up the quality setting in the refract node to get clearer distorion through the camo, but it also slows down rendering quite a lot. For the slime, make sure you have your "minimum displacement bounds" set to 1.5 or greater. In general you want it set to the highest displacement value you have on any material in your scene.

Well, you shouldn't be afraid, Ajax. You're damn good. You're going to end up putting texture artists out of business, some day.

Heh heh. Thanks Khrys. I won't be throwing away any of my Vicki textures just yet though ;-)

Very cool. Both shaders are great.

I dunno. Slimey Vicky in a temple could be the next big craze...

"Well, you shouldn't be afraid, Ajax. You're damn good. You're going to end up putting texture artists out of business, some day." Argh! I hope not. ;)

Ajax.. Is there any way to make the granite/concrete bits less shiny? I've tried but as I don't REALLY know what I'm doing with such a complexe shader as this one, I'm not sure which parameters to tweak. I'm as far from being a mathematician as can be, I've always passionately HATED math LOL But... perhaps if something like this had existed when I was in school I could have seen some USE for the stuff - now I'm afraid it's too late to kick my boor brain into any math-gear :o)

Any chance of a free stuff release? These are really cool effects and I would like to try them out.

Swamp Thang! You make my heart sang! You make EVERYTHING gloopy...

Ajax, Just want to say thanks again. We look forward to your new tutorials for the material room of Poser 5! TK

I think ernyoka1 has stumbled on to something! A New Use for Poser5, A Must have in every Math Class in every school!! Teaches math while encouraging artistic ability and having fun to-boot. Heck, since most schools now have computers and students are allowed calculators (a taboo when I went to school) Why Not?!? ..sorry, just brown-nosing CL...GREAT shaders Ajax!!

Can I ask a really banal question here. What sort of render times are we talking about. I mean, roughly. Minutes, hours or days? Or (shudder) weeks? Totally cool, ajax. mac

My little doodle took a few minutes. I'd imagine something like Ajax's took hours.

These are VERY cool! I Imagine you could replace the concrete node with a image map, so you could have slimey vicky in a slimy temple now! LOL!!

SVIATWAS!!! It's the latest rage.

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Good work, Ajax. One other Predator-style camo method is to render the scene without the Pred, then use that as a perspective map when you add the Predator object to the scene. But yours is better, since it can be animated.

Very cool stuff here. I'm definitely going to have to delve into this. Thanks for showing it off!

By simply altereing a few parameters you can indeed put slime on people too. I just changed the numbers in the math nodes that were connected to the P (Math function 2 and 3 on Ajax' screenshot) and altered the granite to a more fleshlike colour. I haven't tried to plug in an imagemap (texture) yet, but I don't see why not :o)

Hey! That pixie looks familiar! LOL!! It's kind of odd.. I KNOW there are a BUNCH of power pixies out there, but I've only seen I think maybe 3 renders where people used him. I've saved every single one so far. (God forbid I ever do a vicky character.. I don;t think I'd have enough "naked vicky in a temple" HD space! LOL!!

OK another test. Yes you can ideed plug in a texture map. Put it instead of the granite and this is the result (still with some other numbers in the Math Function 2 and 3 too) (oh and the W stands for WITHUOUT ;o) )

This is just WAY too cool! If a water version can be created, then you'd have a way to have a figure look like the water is dripping down off the figure! Making it smaller and less glossy, would probably look more like moss (Maybe add a bump node of some kind?)

Attached Link: http://home.earthlink.net/~igohigh4/compixie.jpg

Gareee; don't fret, he's out there. This one doesn't have any slime nor any Vicky, heck it isn't even in a temple or a sewer. BUT, the content may not be for everyone (and he is a nekkid pixie) {sorry, not related to slime in any way, just don't want Greee to feel left out ;p>

Cool pic, igohigh. I especially like the cigarette butt. LOL. mac

LOL!! thanks, Igo! ;) I don;t think he's microsloth certifried though...

Just in case anyone would like my version.. Here it's Vicky3's body plugged in as a texture map. As you can see, not much is altered from Ajax' version

Thanks you so much Ajax for giving these settings and also for taking the time to explain. I can see very interesting uses for this P node, especially for terrain texturing. And yes, if that's not too much to ask from your generosity, uploading these wonderfuls materials would very much help (I like to develop each of the preview stages so that I can have a better idea of what I'm doing). Thank you so much again.

Whoa. I go to sleep on a Sunday night and the thread explodes. Gotta rush off to work in a minute. (Actually I'd better start looking for a new job today but that's another story). I'll try to answer a few questions before I go. Mac, The slime renders fast. The camo is a refractive material which means it renders a bit slower. Still, that slime and camo pic I posted probably took less than 5 minutes to render. A lot longer than that to set up, of course, but actual render time isn't bad at all. Treckie, Yep, you can make the concrete less shiny. The easiest way is to darken the input_1 colour in Blender_2. It's very dark grey at the moment. Black should get rid of that wet look. A harder way is to add a new blender and use it to control the highlight colour so the slime still gets white highlights but the concrete gets grey or something. You could even try plugging Blender 2 straight into the highlight colour channel. BTW Input_2 on Math Functions 2 controls the height of the border between the slime and the other material. Increase it to raise the border, decrease it to lower. Input_2 of Math_Functions_3 controls the large scale variation of the border - it's what stops columns from all having the border at the same height. If you look at the very first image I posted with the red and green columns you can see where that node is putting the border and you can see how it corresponds to the slime image. I can see there's a lot of interest in a free stuff pack, so I'll definitely do one. Please be patient with me though. I've got a few other things I've promised I'll do for different people over the next few weeks and I need to get those done first. When I do the free pack, I'll put a bunch of other shaders in it though. Maybe a few little props and scenes too.

Sorry for flooding this thread, I just find this slime thing SO COOL! And I'll try that trick about the highlight Ajax. On this one I added a glossy node to the blood, but forgot it would affect the body texture too, so she got a little too shiny. Seems the size of things are also a factor... the sword should actully be almost covered on "blood" - same setting as on the floor, yet there's very little blood on it.. Hmm I must continue to play with this, there's such a lot of possibilities with this one. I never knew what the P node was for (not sure I do now, but at least I can see what it does, more or less) - I must play more with those math nodes... they're really cool, I wish someone would make an easy-to-understand explanation of what the various nodes does. But I guess that would quickly turn into a whole book :o)

LOL ernyoka - I gues that'd be NVIATWASCIB (CIB = Covered In Blood)..:-))

Attached Link: http://www.utm.edu/~mharvey/MathFunctions/MathFunctionsIndex.html

Here is a link that "explains" a few ones.

Thx Ajax, a free stuff pack would be so good, cya and take care...

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ernyoka1; I noticed you plugged your Vicky image map into Blender node#2? I tried it to create a Slimy Wall, like from Semore and The Wall of Slime (old `60s show, pre-Elvira days) but I by-passed the Blender node and went to the BUMP node to give it a bump map for the brick shapes. It turned how how I expected but was wondering, what's the difference between plugging it into Blender#2 vs not (ie: displacing the image map with the slime displacment or giving it it's own bumping)?

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