I just came across this texture test I'd done awhile back in preparation for an assignment. I was interested in seeing the fidelity that the Shader Plus bevel function would provide me when using a multichannel mixer for the metal texture. It did a great job keep sublte fillets/bevels accross two shaders on straight geometry, saving me a ton of modeling time. 

Anything Goos was used for the texture blender. Gotta hand it to Eric at Digital Carver's Guild, really nice plugins for some great texture control. 

Cool! Just got them both (along with several others). Looking forward to playing with them. The possiblities are amazing. :)

Mark, that is very impressive result.

I have a couple of questions tough:

1. What was the unshaded mesh like?

2. How is this different from Carrara's own displacement.

I have the plug-ins, but I must have been usinfg them wrong, because I didn't find my tests very impressive.

One of the lighting models is "Bevel" in Shader Plus. It fakes bevels on polyline edges, preventing the requirement to model them. This allows highlights to occur on the edges to better define form and make things look more 'real' since sharp edges are rarely a reality. The image in this post reveals the hard edges that are softened by the Bevel function. 

Anything Goos is not a displacement function per se. It merely allows the combining of two different shaders at the edges of objects and then provides ways to apply noise for the blend between the two. Awhile back I did a tutorial that uses Anything Goos: Weatherize Quickly. This vehicle was textured with Anything Goos really fast with no texture painting required. 

Thank you for the explanation! It makes perfect sense now.

Sorry, my bad. I've used Anything Goos and love it, but I think I confused this "Bevel" in Shader Plus function with Anything Grooves.

Is there a reason to use Anything Grooves over Carrara's own displacement?

Also: how does "Bevel" fare in terms of render time? Does it add more than what additional geometry would have added or less? Would you use it in animation?

@Anataran, 

I use the Carrara Displacement function instead of the Anything Grooves function now. 

Regarding Bevel, I've noticed no increase in render time when using it. For animation, especially if you are doing a tight shot, it is better to model the bevel. Since the plugin fakes the effect, in can have some artifacts on pointed corners such as the cube - but not always - it depends on the render settings and camera distance-to-object.

fine work Mark. thanks for shareing that.

Eric, if you are listening ... would it be possible to convert the Shaders Plus bevel into actual geometry?

I don't know how difficult this would be to code, but it could be a big timesaver for the user.

Certainly it would be worthy of increased pricing for the Shaders Plus plugin if you added it there, or even released it as a new plugin.

There are already functions in the modelers to add bevels.

Quote - There are already functions in the modelers to add bevels.

True, but Shaders Plus does it automatically on all edges at once. If beveling could be done on the geometry all at once, like Shaders Plus does on the render, that could be a great time saver.

You can bevel all edges at once in the vertex modeler and on the front and back faces in the spline modeler.

i can't get into more detail this week but next week I can provide more info.

Quote - You can bevel all edges at once in the vertex modeler ...

That is good to know. I typically use Hexagon for modeling and I've always had to select the edges I want to bevel. I wrongly assumed Carrara was similar.

That could make a project I was working on in Hexagon a while back much easier.

Definitely have to look at Carrara's beveling then, thanks for the tip Kixum.

No problem.  I am a little surprised you can't do that in Hex as well.  I'll look at both.