I at least need to know how to go about making one :P I have to admit the fresnel blend throws me off. I'm never sure where to put it in the whole node setup. And I've certainly no idea about a pearl shader. I figure the newest version of Poser could probably pull it off tho.

Anyone?

Laurie

Hi Laurie

I could've sworn I'd seen one on a thread about SSS for non-human objects over at RDNA, but just checked and ended up re-reading the thread... and while Bagginsbill says, I think, it'd be good for doing pearl... there's no actual example there... yet...

...sorry, I tried

Check out this teeth shader, they were talking about pearl in this thread...

http://forum.runtimedna.com/showthread.php?65244-SSS-Attempting-realistic-teeth-comments-please!-Suggestions-welcome!&p=630140&viewfull=1#post630140

THANKS 3doutlaw! I think I might be able to do something with a shader I found there :D

Laurie

No problem, glad to help!

Matt

Quote - Here's one I knocked up when PP2012 was first released...

Are you talking about the shaders or the old lady?

Quote - Are you talking about the shaders or the old lady?

Ha ha! Well, I walked right into that one.

I get a nice glowing jelly blob.
My hatred of the material room remains unchanged since version 6

;)

Laurie

luv pearls.  :wub:  and opals with those lil flecks of colors.   opals and pearls are a girl's best friend.  and jade.  and hematite.

I'm attempting to hash something together. You want white pearls, yes? And something tweaked to work with pure IDL lighting, myesss?

Well, I was thinking sort of an off-white pearl...like the kind you see in necklaces...ever so slightly yellow. Cream...yes, that's the word I'm looking for...lol. :P

Laurie

Good luck with that shader. I find the material room to be somewhere between sticking a fork in my eye and the seventh level of hell.

Laurie

Quote - luv pearls.  :wub:  and opals with those lil flecks of colors.   opals and pearls are a girl's best friend.  and jade.  and hematite.

I always thought it was chocolate. 

Quote - I always thought it was chocolate. 

Damn straight...lol.

Laurie

Quote - > Quote - I always thought it was chocolate. 

Damn straight...lol.

Laurie

chocolate martinis

Quote - This is what I'm coming up with so far. Excuse slightly crappy render settings and random primitives to test reflections. This is with pure IDL, no specular lights. Cream enough, or needs more yellow?

Maybe a bit more creamy? LOL

Don't look bad so far ;).

Laurie

I needed a reference image where I control (and can reproduce) the lighting. So I took a magazine (to see reflections) and put some pearls on it and shot the picture.

I attached that to a Poser square, and suspended some Poser pearls and went to work.

I am closer, I think, than last time.

I'm not sure if I am willing to give this one away, though. This belongs in the store - nobody has anything like it. It happens to be using some techniques for thin coatings that I only recently developed. Like a few days ago. I'm getting that ready for the store, too.

All of these objects only have one material zone. The capsules are set up to show you the two-layer shader I developed. The bottom layer can be a dielectric (plain diffuse) or metallic (shiny metal) surface. Above that is the simulation of a thin coat of semi-transparent (colored) material. You can change the base color, as I've demonstrated, although the most common base is diffuse white, or silvery (white) metal. However, gold is commonly used as well and I'm showing that on the third capsule.

The angle between the observer and the material, as well as the Fresnel refraction effect, must both be considered in order to get the color change to come out right. It's some neat math. However, keep in mind there is no refraction here. There are not really two layers of geometry - just one.

here's one of bill's old pearl shader (not the new one).

it came with his matmatic distrib.

Yanno BB you really should sell ur shaders in just packs. I'd buy them if I didn't have to buy the furniture too, which I can make myself and don't really want ;).

Just a quick thought: a friend said to me (and I agree) that the fact that MOST of us have to rely on just one person for shader help should tell SM something. Hobbyists don't wanna have to be physicists, geologists or mathmaticians - most of us aren't. And just trying to figure out the boxes and noodles in the material room and what they're doing gives me an instant headache. It just shouldn't be this hard. This is the ONLY program I've ever had a problem with shaders in. I can figure out Blenders, Vue's is a flippin breeze, I can write a shader from scratch for Luxrender without even seeing it...this Poser material room just shouldn't be.

Laurie

Quote - here's one of bill's old pearl shader (not the new one).

it came with his matmatic distrib.

I don't use Matmatic. I already think the material room is the seventh level of hell. I'll jump off a bridge using Matmatic.

Laurie

Now I'm better prepared to create various effects intentionally. In the candy paint set, I've carefully chosen 50 colors that really bring out the effect. It's quite amazing to see these colors appear from setting just one color parameter value. At first it's a mystery why one color is so vibrant while another is not. That's why it's important that I prepared a bunch.

I built five versions of each, so there are 250 presets. There's Candy Paint (normal white base), Candy Silver (white metal base), Candy Gold (gold metal base), Candy Silver Blur (blurry silver base), and Crazy Paint (insane, but physically plausible settings on everything.)

In real life, one of these Crazy Paint jobs would cost around $15K.

The attached image shows Insignia Yellow Crazy Paint.

Quote - Yanno BB you really should sell ur shaders in just packs. I'd buy them if I didn't have to buy the furniture too, which I can make myself and don't really want ;).

Yeah, I'm heading in that direction. The furniture pack wasn't supposed to be about insane collections of shaders. It was supposed to be furniture with a couple good looking options. I got carried away.

You know I'd still charge $11.95 for those. You could buy them and throw the furniture away. grin The shaders will work on anything.

Quote - I'm not sure if I am willing to give this one away, though. This belongs in the store - nobody has anything like it. It happens to be using some techniques for thin coatings that I only recently developed. Like a few days ago. I'm getting that ready for the store, too.

No problem ;). My earrings will just have to remain pearless...lol. ;) Onward and upward! :P

Laurie

Quote - You know this is one of the most difficult materials of all.

I needed a reference image where I control (and can reproduce) the lighting. So I took a magazine (to see reflections) and put some pearls on it and shot the picture.

I attached that to a Poser square, and suspended some Poser pearls and went to work.

I am closer, I think, than last time.

I'm not sure if I am willing to give this one away, though. This belongs in the store - nobody has anything like it. It happens to be using some techniques for thin coatings that I only recently developed. Like a few days ago. I'm getting that ready for the store, too.

Getting there. I think the real pearls have the slightest (more?) tinge of green than your shader there.

Ditto on the materials packs. Easier to tell what is overlap, although I have to admit I do kinda like those furnishings... but I can't say I have much use for a full set of bedroom furniture at the moment.

I think if you sold your materials as themed packs, you'd get loads of sales. E.g.

• Natural & Stained Woods Collection
• Painted Wood Collection
• Polished Metal Collection
• Painted Metal Collection
• Gemstone Collection
• Liquids Collection

Etc.

Just ideas; tinker to suit.

Of course, I guess the wood materials collections would be almost redundant now, given the furniture sets. :)

But there are different materials in each furniture item!

Really, a Merchant Resource would be scrumptious.

I would love a set of BB shaders.  I buy so many of ParrotDolphin's Materials, they are incredible fun, but I want to be able to do decent jade and pearls and stuch.

You can already do jade. BB posted a shader for it over at RDNA in the Node Cult.

Laurie

here's another using old pearl shader, in case nobody liked the android.  IMVHO bill should release new pearl shader as freebie: incentive to encourage users to buy new shader pak.

Personally I like the bonus of furniture and more cars along with the shader options...

I'm hoping there'll be another vehicle of four along soon from yourself and Tom, BB? One or two more vintage ones would be good in that too... oh yeah, with pearl hub caps as an option? :lol:

But sure, I'd also buy straight forward material packs. Provided there's a Monkey Green colour option for each material category, of course... and I guess merchant resource versions could be good for the marketplace too?

Laurie, I'd guess there are perhaps two reasons I can think of that SM chose not too bundle more, better material library presets with Poser 9/2012...

First off, BB was still perfecting everything he had... ...but moreover, I guess they recognise that having these as after-market parts stimulates sales in the content marketplaces... and I guess, conversely, the activity in these marketplaces, and associated galleries and forums, plays a big part in driving Poser upgrade sales?

Cap that off with newbie Poser users, Amazon sales etc, being driven in to the marketplaces by the need to obtain better materials and figure content, etc... sounds like a sort of "magic circle" is being defined by that equation?

...well, that's my "aftermarket" hypothesis for the day. LOL :lol:

I wasn't complaining that SM didn't bundle more materials in Poser ;). I was complaining that the material room itself is a WHOLE lot harder than it has to be. I mean, it's a hobbyist program ffs. Why, in all these years (since I've had Poser 6) can't I figured out the material room? Why can't others? Because it's too convoluted and unnecessarily confusing compared to the rest of the program. Poser is the only program I use where I have problem with materials. I mean, why in the name of Mike would one need a shader that has more than a hundred nodes if something wasn't seriously STUPID in the material room? Sorry...I know BB knows what he's doing, but I think that's just insane...lol.

/rant

Laurie

Oh yeah, also Laurie, I remembered that Kobaltkween's Essential Materials 01 for Poser 9+ has a Pearl shader:

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/bcs/essential-materials-01-p9-/91540

EDIT: Don't know if this one is more up-to-date than the one Miss Nancy has cited or not... but it kinda looks like it should be??

Cheers

Thanks but no thanks monkeycloud. I know ya mean well, but I'm not gonna purchase a product just so I can have something that should be fairly easy to do in the program. Besides, I couldn't distribute it anyway ;). All this was for freebie earrings I'm making...lol.

Thanks tho!

Laurie

Quote - I wasn't complaining that SM didn't bundle more materials in Poser ;). I was complaining that the material room itself is a WHOLE lot harder than it has to be. I mean, it's a hobbyist program ffs. Why, in all these years (since I've had Poser 6) can't I figured out the material room? Why can't others? Because it's too convoluted and unnecessarily confusing compared to the rest of the program. Poser is the only program I use where I have problem with materials. I mean, why in the name of Mike would one need a shader that has more than a hundred nodes if something wasn't seriously STUPID in the material room? Sorry...I know BB knows what he's doing, but I think that's just insane...lol.

/rant

Laurie

My personal view on that point is that SM should employ Snarlygribbly and BagginsBill (and whoever else) to make a kind of "EZMaterials" UI mode... e.g. extending the principles of EZSkin to cover more / all common material types... and having that sit, as an "Intermediate" mode between the "Basic" and "Advanced" Mat Room modes; i.e. written into the core Poser program... in C++(?)... rather than a Python plugin.

Of course, those guys... or someone else could do this as a Python plugin, in due course I'm sure too. But if we're going down the line of what you're talking about and having it backed by SM...

...anyway, I think then we'd have the best of all worlds... something more straight forward, but still also the optional power to tinker with the fundamentals.

Where would the quality of Poser renders be stuck at if BB and others had been unable to tinker in the mat room as they have done over the past few years?

Personally, despite being fairly daunted at first, I'm now having quite a lot of fun playing with joining different nodes together and seeing what comes out. Of course, most of what comes out for me is still guff, LOL :lol:

Hmmm....they might be as well just ditching the "Basic" mat room mode altogether, if they were to do something like the above.... does anyone use that?

If BB hadn't been around more of us would be in the dark about the material room than still are...lol

I think SM should have taken a page from Vue d'Esprits's book and given us a simple to use, but still powerful system like Vue's where what you see is exactly what you're gonna get. I'm talking about the Vue 4 material room...lol. I have no idea what Vue's like now since I haven't kept up with it ;). But I could do darn near anything with Vue 4's materials. I think Poser's material room should be visually based. Like just about every other shader system out there ;). I'll put something together in the mat room and it looks TOTALLY different when I render it than it did in the material room preview. It's just one of the major problems I have with it ;)

Anyway...it's for a freebie and graciously BB has given his permission for me to distribute modified versions of BBGlossy with it ;). And with his shared shaders for gems, other semiprecious stones...I've just about got it covered...lol. Pearl would have been nice, but not crucial ;).

Laurie

I've got Vue 10... the material preview is certainly very good. Here's the breakdown of how the Vue material editing system stands now:

http://www.e-onsoftware.com/products/vue/vue_10_complete/?page=10

See the last section regarding their "Smart Graph Editor"... I suspect once you get into the nitty gritty, in any more advanced system, it's going to get messy?

But I'm guessing an equivalent to the current, intermediate material mixing and layering system is what you'd be after?

EDIT: Of course Vue's system is all about materials as landscape layers... so it' a bit different I guess...

Well, more like Vue 4's material editor since it looks like it's only gotten more complicated in the years since ;). But with Vue 4's materials I really COULD create just about anything - MYSELF ;). I didn't have to go running to anyone just to even maybe get an inkling of what's actually going on in Poser's material room much less have them figure it out for me completely. I even managed opal in Vue 4's material editor. Looked really convincing too...lol. What I'm saying is, you could replicate nearly anything with just a few things like specular, emission, diffuse and reflect and refract and a whole lot of functions a whole lot easier than the spaghetti hell we're in now - understood but by a few and exasperating to many. Frankly, I think they should ditch it and start over ;).

Laurie

Quote - Anyway...it's for a freebie and graciously BB has given his permission for me to distribute modified versions of BBGlossy with it ;). And with his shared shaders for gems, other semiprecious stones...I've just about got it covered...lol. Pearl would have been nice, but not crucial ;).

Cool... look forward to it. I just downloaded your Boudoir Lamp... many thanks! I'll keep an eye out for the earrings

I guess I can apply some pearl myself, in due course, once BB releases that car with the pearl hub caps...

Quote - > Quote - Anyway...it's for a freebie and graciously BB has given his permission for me to distribute modified versions of BBGlossy with it ;). And with his shared shaders for gems, other semiprecious stones...I've just about got it covered...lol. Pearl would have been nice, but not crucial ;).

Cool... look forward to it. I just downloaded your Boudoir Lamp... many thanks! I'll keep an eye out for the earrings

I guess I can apply some pearl myself, in due course, once BB releases that car with the pearl hub caps...

You're welcome and I hope BB makes your pearl hubcaps...lol.

Laurie

Quote - You're welcome and I hope BB makes your pearl hubcaps...lol.

Let's hope so

Can't wait to try out that fancy gel coat material on my avatar cat-bot though too...

...and I wish I could afford a paint job like that on my real-world van!

the material room preview, do you mean the lil window on the main node?  the lights in use effect the preview. 

i had a purple light, the material thumbnail saved to my lib had a purple tint  but, of course, next time i used it, it wasn't purple.

Quote - the material room preview, do you mean the lil window on the main node?  the lights in use effect the preview. 

i had a purple light, the material thumbnail saved to my lib had a purple tint  but, of course, next time i used it, it wasn't purple.

Yeah... the preview doesn't seem to work with a lot of the newer nodes etc... EZMetal or SSS shaders etc, just shows black... or shows the texture without the effect from key nodes...

...although pretty sure this is an issue with OpenGL (and maybe also software preview?) preview, full stop... rather than just that mat room preview window?

Minyassa did a BagginsBill-inspired set of sculpturals and gems in a merchant resource a few years back, and I use those to death.

Hmm, she seems to have pulled her "Sculpturals."

Amen on ParrotDolphin's materials. :)

Quote - Minyassa did a BagginsBill-inspired set of sculpturals and gems in a merchant resource a few years back, and I use those to death.

Hmm, she seems to have pulled her "Sculpturals."

Amen on ParrotDolphin's materials. :)

Heh...I've already made most of those...at least for Poser 8 ;). Aventurine, Lapis, Turquoise, etc.

What I've made for the earrings so far is peridot, amethyst, aquamarine, garnet (blood red and pinkish versions), iolite, citrine, crystal, blue topaz, jade, nephrite jade, blue and green chalcedony and pink jasper. I have black glass in there too ;). Also gold, silver, copper, rose gold. I figured that was probably enough...lol.

The problem with this new stuff is it looks different under IDL and lit with emitters. It looks awesome when you light with emitters, but sorta dull when you use IDL. I may need to make two versions.

Laurie

I have made a simplified pearl I'm happy with you using in your freebie.

It's strictly PP2012 though. Otherwise it just isn't possible to make it simple.

Rendering now - will post it shortly.

Quote - I have made a simplified pearl I'm happy with you using in your freebie.

It's strictly PP2012 though. Otherwise it just isn't possible to make it simple.

Rendering now - will post it shortly.

Aw, that's nice BB but I don't want you to give away anything you want to sell...lol. I want ya to make lots and lots of green stuff :P. Hana Hanabi is working on a pearl shader too.

Laurie

Attached Link: BBSimplePearl material

Link attached to BBSimplePearl.mt5

Wow..that looks purdy darn good...lol. But keep it for ur shaders pack ;). I know ya wanna sell it...hehe. Looks great tho :). That's the closest I've seen anyone get so far.

Laurie