Hey Everyone while playing around with Eevee and shaders today I noticed this about the mix shader when plugged into the roughness of the metallic material output. That being that it can be used a strength amount to dial a single input by. By adjusting the factor of the first 2 mix shaders I was able to come up with a variety of different looks etc to Suzanne. Not sure if this is how they are supposed to work as I always thought that it mixed 2 together. and made no difference to a single input. Or if it does the same in 2.79 or 2.78C etc.

Incantrix

Cool ... this is good to know!! For those unaware, this is in Blender.

We can also set up a shade tree like this in Poser Pro 11, but we need to use Physical Surface base node and plug the set into the Metallic input node, then render with SuperFly.

Hi Guys

First my deepest apologies as I posted this to the Blender forum and somehow it ended up here. And as Boni said this Blender but an unreleased 2.8 version that is only in testing stages atm. Using this setup will not work in cycles or the last stable releases. May have to dust the cobwebs off of poser and d/l all the sr's and see if does work but only having done 1 image in p11 since its release not sure on the finer points of setting up the node tree in it. If you have a crack at it infinity10 would love to see the results.

Incantrix

Oh as a side note note the image texture is just a basic smudge texture I use to give glass that dusty or smudged look that I got of of google images.

Incantrix

Moved to Blender Forum

Thanks WheatPenny had no idea how to do that my self or why it ended up where it did.

Incantrix

And few more of it

Some differences can be very subtle while others are more extreme.

Incantrix

Nice work. The Principled Shader should simplify this kind of work.

I thought so as well LuxXeon but for some reason I couldn't get the mix shader to work as a single input strength adjustment in the cycles engine. In cycles what ever I put into the mix shader is what I got out, which makes sense. In 2.8 and the eevee engine I could adjust the strength of what came out. Say the texmap, adjusting the mix shader between 1 and 0 gave me either the full map applied or no map at all applied and .5 being a half strength map. And yep this can be done in cycles but with more nodes to adjust the factors. As far as eevee goes not sure if it is a bug or not though, but does leave for some interesting results.

Incantrix

Have you seen Andrew's recent video on the Principled BSDF? He manages some similar looking metal results with a Suzanne head. It starts around 29:30 and thereafter. Of course, everything he's doing with the shader in his video is controlled by PBR texture maps, and yours is obviously procedurally controlled by the mix shader values. I could be completely incorrect of course, but I don't think your results are the effect of a bug. It seems the roughness channel is using the mix input node like a procedural greyscale gradient ramp. This should be possible the same way using Cycles with the Principled shader eventually but obviously hasn't been incorporated yet. I'm thinking it's an intentional effect because the same type of control is possible in other physical engines like Octane, where value params on most nodes are treated as basic gradient intensity factors even if no image maps are present.

Yes I have seen it. Have a lot of his videos, like his style and way of doing things. Seems to have a very simplified way of explaining things, making it easier for beginners to comprehend as well as the more advanced users to an intermediate level. Spent the last few days trying to get someway way of sliding the adjustments into the principled shader, using a procedural greyscale has limited effect using nodes as I did, worked better with the pbr maps though, although I managed to crash both 2.78.5 and 2.8 in my attempts lol. But from my limited knowlege I believe the principled shader is designed to work mainly with maps rather than shaders. ( I could be wrong though). Have never used octane but do have prman for blender so may try that and see how it works. Need to work out how to create a map strength node/group with a single slider to indicate that strength. About to start trying it with different albedo and metal maps with eevee to see if i can get the same type of results.

Incantrix

I don't understand what this node setup is doing at all. You are mixing a glossy shader's BSDF into the roughness input, which should be expecting a value of 0 to 1. What exactly does that do? I think that in your setup, only the bottom chain (starting with the texture) is actually affecting the roughness at all.

Hi MDO2010 I have no idea why this works as it does but only works in eevee. In the principled shader and tying to set up something similar using nodes in cycles and the glossy has no effect at all on the output. With eevee though the glossy does effect the amount of light reflected off of it with the metallic set to 1. My main point with it is why is a single input into a mix shader adjusting the strength of that input. When to me it is designed to mix 2 inputs together to give a combined output.

Incantrix

incantrix posted at 5:27PM Mon, 17 July 2017 - #4310002

.... My main point with it is why is a single input into a mix shader adjusting the strength of that input. When to me it is designed to mix 2 inputs together to give a combined output...

Incantrix

Ah. I think that is because the mix shader treats the empty input as if it was black, or zero, and mixing that into whatever is in the other input. I could be wrong, but I think that is what is going on. :)

I was thinking along the same lines. Although I had a ghosting effect or washing out type effect stuck in my mind. Which lent me to lean more towards a white rather than a black, but I am still learning the nodes so to speak and could have this mixed up. Basically I will plug anything into anything just to see what happens lol. More so as well it only works in eevee and not the principled shader as to me they are based around the same type of setup just using a different engine.

Incantrix

hang on ............I not messed with evee yet ............so but a mix shader with one input is on or off

Hi Hedheld True it is in the cycles engine and the prman engine. For some reason in Evee it acts like a sliding scale or it did, havn't been back and looked at it in the more recent builds.

Incantrix