RobZhena posted at 7:54PM Sun, 09 May 2021 - #4418862

I would say that all of the foregoing discussion about complex nodes demonstrates that your suggestion that the physical surface node is One Node to Rule Them All is incorrect. Way too complex and way too slow, at least in Poser 11.

I think you misunderstood what I meant with it. The physical surface node from what I understood, is simply one which is made to handle the most generic cycle setup in one Node, rather than you having to make them from scratch through cycles. (Its some time since I heard it, so might recall wrong).

But from what I understood, everything you have in the physical node you could also make using cycles, there is no difference. besides you not having to combine these cycle nodes together all over the place yourself.

Whether its slower or not, I have no clue as I haven't tested it, but see no reason to think, that it should be.

I don't believe I have ever said that the Physical node was a Node to rule them all, but rather that it is perfectly suitable to handle almost all normal or standard materials, like wood, metal, stone, paint, plastic etc. But that there are some things that it can't do, like water, glass, ice, which is why I made the other thread about Glass.

Also this doesn't concern any of the missing nodes that people talk about, this is a general issue with Superfly or Poser or what you want to call it.

But a lot of people, including myself, don't like using cycles because I don't know what is going on in it. I don't know what will happen when I use a Mix node and plug "fac" into a lightpath or geometry nodes -> Position or what it is called. I can't visualize what is going to happen or even why I would do it in the first place, because I have no clue what it means.

If you use the physical surface node with the exceptions of those mentioned above, it can handle it, by simply using texture maps. which are much easier for people to understand.

If you know that White is maximum Roughness and Black is no Roughness, then a Grey is somewhere between these. And therefore it is both visually and in general easier to understand when looking at a texture map. compared to looking at a lot of nodes.

And personally I haven't found any material I haven't been able to make using the Physical node with the exception of those materials mentioned above, and there might be others obviously, but can't think of them right now.

Where cycles is very good and if I understand what some people are complaining about when it comes to missing nodes, is because you can make procedural materials by building them from scratch and lacking certain nodes can be very annoying. But for most people, as others have also mentioned, they don't use cycles because they make little sense. Whereas the Physical node works pretty much exactly like Firefly and is visually easy to understand.

So I hope that made it more clear what I meant. Besides the ones I mentioned, what materials have people issue with creating using it?