i know for what is this node used. for brushed metal right? or something similar.
but please explain to me  why is there xdir_x,xdir_y and xdir_z ?
for what is it used?
dont tell me that i should use only u and v hightlight size. i want to know what it means.
this node is in poser for years now. 

 Nothing in nature has a perfectly circular specular highlight like you'd find on a Phong shader, so Anisotropic is probably the most underrated specular type of all.

Traditionally it is used to create brushed metal, stainless steel but can also be used for (procedural) hair or any other object that has "irregular" specular highlights.

Normally xDir, yDir and zDir (don't know the exact names in PoserSpeak) distort the direction of your highlight while highlight size will affect intensity or width. Really the best way to understand this is to load a sphere, apply an Anisotropic and tweak the settings.

 replicand has it right, as far as I know.

I don't think I've ever used Anisotropic for metal, but I use it all the time in hair and eyes.  To me, it has a more natural effect than other specularity settings.

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Yes, that's right, anisotropic looks great when used for wet skin and hair!!!

Quote -  Nothing in nature has a perfectly circular specular highlight like you'd find on a Phong shader, so Anisotropic is probably the most underrated specular type of all.

Traditionally it is used to create brushed metal, stainless steel but can also be used for (procedural) hair or any other object that has "irregular" specular highlights.

Normally xDir, yDir and zDir (don't know the exact names in PoserSpeak) distort the direction of your highlight while highlight size will affect intensity or width. Really the best way to understand this is to load a sphere, apply an Anisotropic and tweak the settings.

you think i didnt do tests? :)
thats why i opened this thread. there are no changes. is my poser software broken or wht?there is no change in the redner when i change xDir, yDir and zDir

 What is your lighting setup, ice-boy?  That may have something to do with why you're not seeing changes.

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Knowledge is knowing a tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is not putting it into a fruit salad.

 I'm seeing the same thing with infinite lights, Anisotropic plugged into alternate specular and normal specular turned off. I can sort of control the direction using U or V highlight size but x-zDir doesn't appear to work. Not very intuitive, this one.

its tehre for years and i dont remember if it worked. and since i dotn know how it works why isnt it explained? 
you wont tell me that its just there  and not working,

p.s. who uses the skin node? why its still there? you have bagginsbill's skin shader for free and its like .........200 times better.

 skin is useful for things other than skin ;)  makes a nice cloth.

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Knowledge is knowing a tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is not putting it into a fruit salad.

 This is sort of the behavior I would expect, but I can't get these results out of P7.

Quote -  skin is useful for things other than skin ;)  makes a nice cloth.

i am using gamma corrected shaders which are mroe realistic then the standard shader settings. and i dont know why i would use skin for cloth. it has build ambient in. i can not use this. the specular behaves very strange. 

 Well just because YOU don't have any use for it doens't make it useless in general ;)

I've never used the skin shader for cloth but I can see how it might work for certain kinds of fabric.

I've once had a very nice (pre BB) Skin Shader that relied mostly on the clay shader. Looked very weird unrendered but had a wonderfully velveteen sheen to it. Very nice skin.

But... replicand.. are you saying that the Anisotropic is broken in P7? I've always only used it for the specular highlights in the eyes, and I haven't noticed that it behaved differently... 

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  Using Poser since 2002. Currently at Version 11.1 - Win 10.

i think its broken.

 @ TrekkieGrrl, I'm not saying that it's broken but in P7 (OSX 10.5) I get some pretty wonky results, unlike my example above. If you don't mind my saying so, if you're using it for eye highlights - that's a pretty small surface area to determine whether or not it's working properly.

Why has not BagginsBill commented yet?

Quote - Why has not BagginsBill commented yet?

It might be his one day of rest in seven.

"If I were a shadow, I know I wouldn't like to be half of what I should be."
Mr Otsuka, the old black tomcat in Kafka on the Shore (Haruki Murakami)

Skin node works fine in Poser 5, in Poser 6 and 7 is really ugly, but I don't think much people really know how to use it, and yes, makes a better velvet than the velvet node :-)

* *I haven't commented because, indeed, I was resting on the seventh day. Heheheh.

But seriously, I don't have an answer here. Out of my 10,000 hours of practice to become an expert and know everything, I've only completed about 4,000 hours. Determining the exact functionality or lack of functionality of those 3 parameters on the Anisotropic node is somewhere in the next 6,000 hours of work.

However, I'll tell you that in the first 4,000 hours of work, I HAVE NEVER SEEN THOSE PARAMETERS DO ANYTHING AT ALL. I CANNOT FIND ANY CHANGE IN OUTCOME.

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can we use texture images to control when the node is using U and V ? 

for example controling where it is?

Of course you can. You can modulate just about any parameter by plugging in some nodes.

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lets say i have an object that is in reality brushed material. so its blury.
thats because of the microscopic lines.

so if i paint in photoshop a black and whtie image i can control this direction?
for example sometimes the metal is brushed more round then straigh lines.

BB is this similar to the shader that you made for the CD at runtimedna. runtimedna doesnt work so i can not look .

this would be nice in poser
www.neilblevins.com/cg_education/aniso_highlights/aniso_highlights.htm

We have that. What do you mean?

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it would be nice if it would look like that in poser. yes the word anisotropic is on the node. but is it acting like it should? 
i am  trying to make it work  with hair. i was trying something with the edge blend. or maybe combining or substracting with another specular node  . but no luck

Still don't get what you mean by it acting like it should?

Here are two of my perfect UV mapped sphere (U horizontal, V vertical).

Both have an Anisotropic node for specular.

Left has u_highlight_size = 1, v_highlight_size=.05.
Right has the opposite, u size = .05, v size = 1.

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but the specular goes in the center. is that normal?

Attached Link: http://www.neilblevins.com/cg_education/aniso_highlights/example_sphere_vertical_grooves.jpg

Still not understanding what you mean?

Poser Pro render.

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Ice-boy you showed me a bunch of pictures that I can make in Poser. Are you saying you can't make those? Because I make those.

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Quote - Still not understanding what you mean?

Poser Pro render.

those are your balls? or poser balls? 

My balls. Poser primitives have bad UV maps. You have to use props like those other guys were using. The anisotropic effect follows the UV contours.

I have tried to explain why the Poser primitives have bad UV maps to the SM people. The content guys there don't understand CG. They remapped the new ones completely different than what I was saying. Thank goodness they never released them. The old ones were bad enough. The new ones were worse.

So now I make my own primitives.

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then the primitives are the reason? 

could we also make good hair specular with good UV's ?

thanks

OMG. i never looked at the UV from the sphere.

is this some sick joke or what?

Yes I told them. That is why I had to build the Environment Sphere myself. And the Orb.

The Poser torus is worse. The cylinder isn't too great either.

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Quote - could we also make good hair specular with good UV's ?

Yes. The example hair render I posted has good UV.

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OMG i now looked at the UV from the cube. there is space between.
in the name of god who did this?  he he he

so when you said that you made a shader where you light individual hairs. is this done with a better UV map or just with nodes? is this some new trick ? 

just trying to start a conversation he he : -)

You make me laugh out loud.

OK here's a hint. I use a Fractal_Sum to make long tiny grooves, too small for bump but visible anyway. I drive the Anisotropic with this. Only works if all the hairs are in the same direction, i.e. vertical or horizontal. This is my definition of a good hair UV - all hairs in the same direction ON THE UV MAP, so procedurals can do their job.

Kozaburo did not do this so I don't like his UV maps. Some are horizontal, some vertical, in the same map. He did this to use space.

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try the ALL BACK HAIR. all hair are in the same direction.

i actually did this already. i changed teh UV's from some hair that i have on my computer. like oyu said. but i used a textur emap that i made.  always happy to see that sometimes i am thinking right.

thanks.

Quote - The anisotropic effect follows the UV contours.

.

i dont understand this. what are contours? sorry but thats by bad english. how does it follow it ?

thanks.

A contour line is when you have a 2-dimensional function and you draw a line or curve through the 2-D space following a path where the function has a constant value.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contour_line

In my case, I was talking about lines of constant U or lines of constant V (UV coordinates) mapped onto the geometry of our models.

For the Anisotropic node to work properly, the fine microscopic lines we are hoping to simulate must line up with a U contour or a V contour. If not, it will not work.

 

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Quote - > Quote - could we also make good hair specular with good UV's ?

Yes. The example hair render I posted has good UV.

does every hair need to be in line or just in the same direction? 
for example is this good? they are in the same direction.

i did a test

specular

this is a hair cap. a simple mode. this is how the render looks

so is it normal that the anisotropic goes in the middle of the model? 
this is the UV.

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/showthread.php?message_id=3153609&ebot_calc_page#message_3153609

I've posted a hair shader that uses the anisotropic node for highlights in the linked post, feel free to use that as an inspiration. 

thanks will try out.

Thanks for that node clip, there, ice-boy. Had me a bit of fun with it. First of all, I have NO blessed idea what I'm doing. I'm attempting to leverage what I think I know about shaders in building this one. Probably my first mistake, since my knowledge is still on pretty shaky pilings.

Anyway, here's the code:

  addNaught = Add(0, 0)
  hairTxtr = FractalSum(
    .000004 * u_Texture_Coordinate(),
    4 * addNaught, 
    4 * addNaught, 
    8, 
    .3, 
    .5, 
    .5).labelled("FractalSum")

  setSpecular = Anisotropic(
    hairTxtr, 
    4, 
    .5, 
    .22, 
    0, 
    1, 
    0).labelled("Anisotropic")

Not exactly your original numbers. Here's the shader in a form you're more familiar with:

...and the hair file I cobbled together quickly in the GIMP to use with Tequila Hair:

..and a piccie:

Not sure if the weird artifacts in the hair is due to the poor colourMap or if I need to muck around with the shader. Still have a long way to go with this one... but thanks for the clues, BB. Probably totally mis-using them and everything, but I'm having a great time doing it!

Monterey/Mint21.x/Win10 - Blender3.x - PP11.3(cm) - Musescore3.6.2

Wir sind gewohnt, daß die Menschen verhöhnen was sie nicht verstehen
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I think the color map needs to be plugged into the bump or displacement, as well, to really bring out the anisotropic use

i think hte fractal sum should be used for the bump

Right.
Trying to sort out what the different nodes are doing. Anisotropic I think I've kinda been playing enough with to know at least how Specular_Value and u and v highlight interact. Which is so cool... done some interesting things with shiny clothing using that and Edge_Blend.
And u_texture_coordinate is just a directional thing. Plugging it into the xScale is a bit weird to me, because the x-axis says side-to-side, not vertical. In the colourMap, the hair strands run vertically. Even the preview image is vertical. But hey, the stripes u_texture_coordinate creates don't do anything appropriate in the y scale or z scale channels - I tried - so x scale it is. I guess we must be talking about:
**Generally on any figure or prop, the U coordinate is chosen to go horizontally around the geometry and the V node goes vertically on the geometry.
**Meaning, the vertical lines are arranged horizontally across the geometry?
Think of it as latitude and longitude, like on a map. The value usually goes from 0 to 1 in both dimensions, but that is not an intrinsic limitation.
The same rules apply as to how to control the characteristics of the stripe. Play with this one for a while. Also try using the V node instead of the U node.
So I did.

Started to run into trouble. It was time to put up a test square, group and assign a material to the group, and try the texture against the group:

s = Surface()
s.Alternate_Diffuse = Blender(
  Spots(WHITE, IColor(0,8,190),.9,0, .25) * IColor(78,78,78),
  IColor(214,0,61),
  .8)
s.Alternate_Specular = Anisotropic(
  Specular_Colour = Fractal_Sum(.000004 * u_texture_coordinate(), 4, 4, 8, .3, .5 .5)
  Specular_Value = 4,
  u_Highlight_Size = .2,
  v_Highlight_Size = .6,
  x-dir_x = 0,
  x-dir_y = 0,
  x-dir_z = 0)

Gets me this:

No idea what is causing that disruption in the texture 3/4 of the way down. Any ideas?

Monterey/Mint21.x/Win10 - Blender3.x - PP11.3(cm) - Musescore3.6.2

Wir sind gewohnt, daß die Menschen verhöhnen was sie nicht verstehen
[it is clear that humans have contempt for that which they do not understand] 

Metaphor of Chooks

What exactly did you use a the test square ?
You can check the U and V gradients by either using a checker texture or using (seperately) the U and V coordinate nodes to drive the Diffuse colour or value.

i noticed you get very interesting results if you connect the Fractal Sum to the U and V hightlight size.

Looks good, but I still get that disruption of the texture. This is just the standard Poser Primitive one-sided square:

Might try it on the high-res square and see if my results vary.

Monterey/Mint21.x/Win10 - Blender3.x - PP11.3(cm) - Musescore3.6.2

Wir sind gewohnt, daß die Menschen verhöhnen was sie nicht verstehen
[it is clear that humans have contempt for that which they do not understand] 

Metaphor of Chooks

Your results will not vary. I frequently encounter these abrupt discontinuities in the noise-based textures. There is some error in the implementation. I have usually had to offset the pattern or combine it with another copy to hide the artifact.

Please help figure this out as it drives me nuts often - I'm vacationing and can't do it at the moment.

Try different scales. Try using constants in the other two scales (an add node with a fixed number). Try using the V coordinate for Y_Scale.

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Okay, different results. Different plane and it didn't happen. I'll have a go at your suggestions next, Bill and see how I go. BTW, you can see that artefact in my hair example above.

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Wir sind gewohnt, daß die Menschen verhöhnen was sie nicht verstehen
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The underlying coordinates of the geomtrical object you use are what is driving the Fractal_Sum. So if you load a one-sided square, scale it or move it, export it as obj, and re-import it as a new prop, you will see a difference. But all that means is the model coordinates influence the presence and location of the artifacts. That doesn't tell you why they happen, where they happen, or how to get rid of them.

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Different plane (the hi-res plane) and the texture didn't interrupt on the face. However, it looked completely different. Same settings, same shader, different plane (looks like poo):

Seems like the texture kinda repeats on the way down. So, might it be a mapping issue? Since the high-res square has more polygons and might be mapped differently? No idea.

I'll make my own square next, in Blender, UV-map an image to it, and see if I can attach the shader. But first, I'll have a go at your suggestions next, Bill and see how I go. BTW, you can see that artefact in my hair example above.

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Wir sind gewohnt, daß die Menschen verhöhnen was sie nicht verstehen
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Made my own square, UV mapped it, gave it a material. Imported into Poser. Here's the shader setup:

s.Diffuse_Color = Blender(
  IColor(77,77,77),
  IColor(131,131,131),
  FractalSum(u_texture_coordinate() * .00004,4 * Add(0,0),4 * Add(0,0),8,.3,.5,.5)

Blender will stay the same... FractalSum will change.

s.Alternate_Specular = Anisotropic(
  FractalSum(u_texture_coordinate() * .00004,4 * Add(0,0),4 * Add(0,0),8,.3,.5,.5)

This is just recreating Ice-boy's shader:

Now, I'll take out the u_texture_coordinate node:
s.Alternate_Specular = Anisotropic(
  FractalSum( .00004,4 * Add(0,0),4 * Add(0,0),8,.3,.5,.5)

So, it has nothing to do with u_texture_coordinate - the break is still there.
Then, I did something weird (gee, what a surprise!). I went back into Blender3D, and extended the UV-map about a fourth to a fifth lower than where the texture was:

Saved as new .blend, exported as new object, loaded shaders, rendered:

The break is not a clean, straight line. There is a bit of a jagged change as well.

Now, where do we want math nodes inserting? between the u_texture_c oordinate node and the x scale channel of FractalSum? Here is where a solid understanding of what exactly u_texture_coordinate() does mathmatically (and why the plugging into y and z scale of Add(0,0) - was that just to bring the global XYZ to uv xyz? Per:
*But my favorite nodes, Fractal_Sum and Turbulence, do not have this checkbox. What to do!!?!?

Well I discovered another bit of magic, an undocumented behavior that at first was very peculiar and difficult to comprehend, but I now use it a lot. If you plug any kind of node into "x scale", "y scale", or "z scale", those parameters STOP USING Model space x,y, or z values. Instead, they use the node you plugged in!!!

So, for example, I can plug a P node into any of those and use World space X, Y, or Z as I see fit. You have to either use one P node and three Comp nodes (to extract each coordinate) or use three P nodes, each set up to only pull out one coordinate. For example, P(x=1, y=0, z=0) will extract only the x coordinate. Unfortunately, due to how vector to scalar math works in the nodes, this gets divided by 3. So you should use P(x=3, y=0, z=0) instead, which cancels the divide by three.*

 

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I realise you are are going to be horror-struck by this, Bill, but at this point, since I have nil math basis or understanding what I'm doing, I'm just trying different nodes and watching for behaviour.

I replaced the weirdly UVmapped square with the normally UVmapped one.
I wanted to see something affect the z scale - which I take is the length of up-and-down (vertical?).
So yes, tried different functions between the v_texture_coordinate and the z scale channel of fractal sum.
This make a change:
s.Alternate_Specular = Anisotropic(
  FractalSum(
    .00004,
    4 * Add(0,0),
   ** 4 * Max(100 * v_texture_coordinate(),** v_texture_coordinate())**,
    8,
    .3,
    .5,
    .5)
  0,
  1,
  0)
**
Forgot to include that last anisotropic parameters bit last time.
And here's the change:

Monterey/Mint21.x/Win10 - Blender3.x - PP11.3(cm) - Musescore3.6.2

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Well, that seemed like a band of another texture coming through the main texture. Took things down to simpler:
s.Alternate_Specular = Anisotropic(
  FractalSum(
    .00004 *** u_texture_coordinate()),
    4 * Add(256,0),
   ** 4 *** Add(0,0),
    8,
    .3,
    .5,
    .5)
  0,
  1,
  0)**

...and discovered this:

Brought up the render in The GIMP and cut off the bottom texture bar to see if it matched the top texture section:

Um, sorta. The pattern is identical, just a hair wider. Thinking memory?

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Wir sind gewohnt, daß die Menschen verhöhnen was sie nicht verstehen
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No, hang on... I had the square tilted at 80 degrees - don't ask me why: I'm a nutcase. So, the texture is identical. So, I went back and tilted the square so it was um square to the camera... and got this!!   :

Um, now what?

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Too many variables. So, square position: 0,90,0. Camera: Front. Render:

Okay, am I wasting my time? Is this whole experiment bogus? It would appear that shifting the camera angle shifted the texture disruption.

I'll start over.

Monterey/Mint21.x/Win10 - Blender3.x - PP11.3(cm) - Musescore3.6.2

Wir sind gewohnt, daß die Menschen verhöhnen was sie nicht verstehen
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Heheh. You're learning that there are many factors that alter your perception, including tilting the camera, that you didn't even think about - why would it matter?

This is why I know more about Poser materials than anybody - I don't draw conclusions after a few dozen tests. I do thousands. I change everything, one at a time, to learn how/if it matters.

Z is not up and down. Z is front to back. Y is up and down. X is left and right.

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I'm going to turn into a monomaniac if I'm not careful.

Oops. Too late.
Zeroing in on the interaction between v_texture_coordinate and FractalSum. Left other settings at default:
FractalSum(
    .4 *** v_texture_coordinate()), 4,** 4**, 8, .5, .5, .5)**

...

Uploading all the next three hours worth of trials is more work than it's worth. However, I kinda think I might have gotten somewhere, after all:

Still a very long way to go. Might be a bogus solution. Knowing me, probably is.

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Wir sind gewohnt, daß die Menschen verhöhnen was sie nicht verstehen
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FYI: v_texture_coordinate() is already a global - it's called simply V

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Thanks, Bill... so I would reference it thus?
x_scale = .0004 * V

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There appears to be some threshold where texture break up in a number of V- or U- related nodes. For instance, did:

s.alternate_diffuse = Sin(U * 500, .5) and it gave me this:

Don't blame me for the epileptic seizure, please.
Upping it to Sin(V * 10000, .5) and it gave me this:

I tried a lot of things to see if I could find that pattern. I found functions I'd never even looked at before. Keeping some of these for future reference... if I ever need astro-turf!!!

  Interestingly, pushing values didn't seem to affect horizontal patterns:
s.alternate_diffuse = Cos(Cellular(Scalex = 100, Scaley = 1, Scalez = 1) * 5, 1)  gave me:

s.alternate_diffuse = Cos(Cellular(Scalex = 10000, Scaley = 1, Scalez = 1) * 5, 1)  gave me:

The search continues....

Monterey/Mint21.x/Win10 - Blender3.x - PP11.3(cm) - Musescore3.6.2

Wir sind gewohnt, daß die Menschen verhöhnen was sie nicht verstehen
[it is clear that humans have contempt for that which they do not understand] 

Metaphor of Chooks

Has nothing to do with any of those nodes. Here's s.Alt_Diffuse =  ImageMap("HairTxtr01.jpg", U_Scale = .5):

Monterey/Mint21.x/Win10 - Blender3.x - PP11.3(cm) - Musescore3.6.2

Wir sind gewohnt, daß die Menschen verhöhnen was sie nicht verstehen
[it is clear that humans have contempt for that which they do not understand] 

Metaphor of Chooks

This:

**#=========================================================

- - GC Shader for Tequila Hair - version 04 - -

#      by Robynsveil (with ideas by IceBoy and BagginsBill)
#=========================================================

Creates a straight-hair and skull-cap material for Tequila Hair.

This GC shader requires the following file exists: TH_StBlack.jpg

It can be made in the GIMP with noise that is then motion-blurred

and unsharp-masked a few times.

 
 
def makeSurface(region):
  # Colour and other Maps
 
  if region == "skullcap":
    transMap = ImageMap("TequilaCap_Tr.jpg")
    colourMap = ImageMap("TequilaCap_Spec.jpg")
  else:
    transMap = ImageMap("TequilaHair_Tr.jpg")
    colourMap = ImageMap("TH_StBlack.jpg")
 
  # convert colourMap to linear colour space
  gcVal = Add(2.2)
  linearColourMap = Color_Pow(colourMap, gcVal)
  
  # Plugging Add(0,0) to y_scale and z_scale is an Ice-Boy-ism - might have
  # something to do with changing model xyz toglobal XYZ or something.
  # Not sure why this is being done...
  hairTxtr = FractalSum(.0004 * U, 4 * Add(0, 0), 4 * Add(0, 0), 8, .3, .6, .2)
  setSpecular = Anisotropic(hairTxtr, 1, .5, .15, 0, 1, 0)
  setTexture = Blender(setSpecular, linearColourMap, linearColourMap * .5)
  # convert baxk to sRGB
  diffuseOut = (setTexture ** (1/2.2)
  
  
  # Make the surface
  s = Surface(1,0,0,0)
  s.Diffuse_Color = colourMap
  s.Transparency = transMap
  s.Bump = colourMap * .05
  s.Alternate_Diffuse = diffuseOut
 
  return s
  
hairBit = [
  "Straight",
  "Skullcap",
 ]
 
 
for mat in hairBit:
  outputs += [
    "-" + mat, makeSurface(mat),
]**

...gives me this...

The artefact is quite noticeable and seems camera and light-angle dependent:

Monterey/Mint21.x/Win10 - Blender3.x - PP11.3(cm) - Musescore3.6.2

Wir sind gewohnt, daß die Menschen verhöhnen was sie nicht verstehen
[it is clear that humans have contempt for that which they do not understand] 

Metaphor of Chooks

BTW, if the code seems a bit wordy, I was preparing for hair texture sets where different regions use different maps (I've encountered one hair set with 5 maps, not including the skullcap). Might be just sending all that as parameters... still coming to grips with that one.

Monterey/Mint21.x/Win10 - Blender3.x - PP11.3(cm) - Musescore3.6.2

Wir sind gewohnt, daß die Menschen verhöhnen was sie nicht verstehen
[it is clear that humans have contempt for that which they do not understand] 

Metaphor of Chooks

i plugged the fractalsum into the alt-diffuse and got the same artifacts as in your renders RobynsVeil, i did this after several other tests to find out what was going wrong.im still playing with other nodes to get a similar effect... so im off to play,lol

Getting old and still making "art" without soiling myself, now that's success.

Can someone answer me this question: does grey of any type have to be gamma-corrected? I know, this is a stupid question, but I'm just not finding the answer anywhere...

Monterey/Mint21.x/Win10 - Blender3.x - PP11.3(cm) - Musescore3.6.2

Wir sind gewohnt, daß die Menschen verhöhnen was sie nicht verstehen
[it is clear that humans have contempt for that which they do not understand] 

Metaphor of Chooks

Not sure where the problem is, Shed... it's not just the maths node: the image node is affected as well... see my last render before I posted my shader.
The hair seems okay at a distance - it's just close-up it looks a bit average. And even at a distance, the hair seems a bit blurred. Overall, I'm not even slightly satisfied this so-called shader I've cobbled together represents what I want to achieve.

Monterey/Mint21.x/Win10 - Blender3.x - PP11.3(cm) - Musescore3.6.2

Wir sind gewohnt, daß die Menschen verhöhnen was sie nicht verstehen
[it is clear that humans have contempt for that which they do not understand] 

Metaphor of Chooks

Quote - Can someone answer me this question: does grey of any type have to be gamma-corrected? I know, this is a stupid question, but I'm just not finding the answer anywhere...

You know the answer already. The only values that are the same in linear color space and sRGB color space are 0 and 1. Everything else is different.

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So I have to GC shades of grey. Dang!
Thanks, BagginsBill. Hope you're enjoying Paris. I lived there for 7 years, back in the 70s... yep, I'm that freakin' old. I understand it's a lot different now... still miss the smell of coffee roasting of a morning waiting for a train at Gare du Nord...

Monterey/Mint21.x/Win10 - Blender3.x - PP11.3(cm) - Musescore3.6.2

Wir sind gewohnt, daß die Menschen verhöhnen was sie nicht verstehen
[it is clear that humans have contempt for that which they do not understand] 

Metaphor of Chooks

You lived here? How great that must have been. I live near Boston (and lived in it for quite a while). Boston is wonderful because of its age - there is so much history and traditions that are fun, as well as the eclectic community created by the incredible variety of immigrants. I went to school in Boston (far from home) and decided to spend the rest of my life there because of the culture.

But Paris is better than Boston in every way I can measure. I'm in love with it. I've been toying with the idea of buying something here, and trying to convince my daughter to go to school here. She will start college this fall in Maine and will probably spend one semester in Dijon. She wants to be a doctor, and my wife and I are trying to convince her to apply to the medical school at the Sorbonne. She's been in French immersion since kindergarten.

P.S: OK I found one way that Boston is better than Paris. The Indian restaurants in Boston will serve you food that is hot as hell, which I love. The Parisians seem to have an aversion to really spicy hot food, and the Indian restaurant we went to didn't go really hot. However, they were incredibly pleasant and the food was delicious, nonetheless.

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Hey, regarding shades of gray, you're not talking to a bump map, right? The values in a bump/displacement  map are not luminance values, and so should not be GC'd.

---

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If you love the Paris of today, there must still be a lot that is much the same as in the 70s. And you are there at the very best time of year, too: Springtime (au printemps).
Most other visitor's experience of the French notwithstanding, I've found that if you make the least amount of effort to speak the language, even Parisians are really quite decent. And there's nothing like getting up really early in the morning, going down to the local Cafe des Sports for a cafe creme (cafe au lait) and a tartine and listening to the oldies at the zinc discussing whatever.
'Bistro' was just not the same in Calif, no matter how hard they tried: it's a unique, quintessentailly French institution. Have you had croque-monsieur?

Jeez, just talking about all this takes me back.

With regards to shades of grey: no, this is for the alternate_diffuse channel. Since specularity also does depend on colour to some degree, I'm going to assume that needs GC-ing as well. Just those channels that use image or colour information as data - bump (incl gradient), displacement - you don't want to be doing gc-ing to. I suppose I should have done the experiment on grey before asking - I'd puzzled over this for quite some time, and arrived at an erroneous conclusion without confirming it with maths.
Thanks for taking the time to answer this, and please do enjoy Paris and the French: it is my favourite place in the world, although Queensland is quickly catching up.

Monterey/Mint21.x/Win10 - Blender3.x - PP11.3(cm) - Musescore3.6.2

Wir sind gewohnt, daß die Menschen verhöhnen was sie nicht verstehen
[it is clear that humans have contempt for that which they do not understand] 

Metaphor of Chooks

new hair tests

here i think i need more hair texture for the backlights. what do you think? 

Impressive, Ice-Boy! Love to see the node set. You're doing something different, aren't you?

Monterey/Mint21.x/Win10 - Blender3.x - PP11.3(cm) - Musescore3.6.2

Wir sind gewohnt, daß die Menschen verhöhnen was sie nicht verstehen
[it is clear that humans have contempt for that which they do not understand] 

Metaphor of Chooks

almost the exact settings like here.V_highlight is 0,27. and different colors.

And you get nil artefact with your FractalSum(x scale) set so low? Which version of Poser are you using? I recreated this exact setup and used it on a plane and got the results I posted earlier.

I guess it's okay for non-close-up work, where you can't really see the artefacts.

Monterey/Mint21.x/Win10 - Blender3.x - PP11.3(cm) - Musescore3.6.2

Wir sind gewohnt, daß die Menschen verhöhnen was sie nicht verstehen
[it is clear that humans have contempt for that which they do not understand] 

Metaphor of Chooks

poser pro.
but  there are some artifacts similar to yours.

I like how the math function on the far right is adding 0 to 0, now i would have thought that this would achieve nothing, but no, if you want it straight you need to plug this in.... hmmm more poser weirdness. On a similar note, i have been using node stratagies from various forums to get the hair look, this first pic with just one type of the fractal sum node cluster at work

Getting old and still making "art" without soiling myself, now that's success.

This render has extra fractal sums at work

Getting old and still making "art" without soiling myself, now that's success.

oh and before i forget the skullcap is still textured with the original image files, this is because i have yet to attack those....although this will be soon...lol
oh and thanks to RobynsVeil,BagginsBill,stewer and Jentron for the ideas that have been pushing me forwards in something i didnt think was possible...

Getting old and still making "art" without soiling myself, now that's success.

Did you get artefact? If not, how did you get around it, shedOfJoy?

Monterey/Mint21.x/Win10 - Blender3.x - PP11.3(cm) - Musescore3.6.2

Wir sind gewohnt, daß die Menschen verhöhnen was sie nicht verstehen
[it is clear that humans have contempt for that which they do not understand] 

Metaphor of Chooks

I seam to get mixed results,in certain tests depending on what the fractal sum is plugged into the artifacts show up, im still testing and trying to figure this one out..... here are my latest test as of last night only difference is the position of the infinite light... i think for the next test i will tie the colours together so they are driven by the fractal sum and see what happens....

Getting old and still making "art" without soiling myself, now that's success.

oh and click image for the bigger render

Getting old and still making "art" without soiling myself, now that's success.

think im getting something more stable now, I dumped the fractal sum and replaced with the fbm node, the next few images are renders of the new shader on different hair and light directions... more tests to follow.... on and i spent 8hours on this today,BagginsBill would be proud of the constant testing lol.....

Getting old and still making "art" without soiling myself, now that's success.

this is clandestine hair

Getting old and still making "art" without soiling myself, now that's success.

and foxy hair

Getting old and still making "art" without soiling myself, now that's success.

And foxy hair at a different light angle

Getting old and still making "art" without soiling myself, now that's success.

please click to enlarge the images...
of course the only image map used on the hair is the Transmap,the hair texture is node driven...
But i have a question for BagginsBill....
most hair has a skullcap material zone, all the other material zones require lines from top to bottom to create the hair strands... the skullcap does not, it requires the strands to eminate out from the center point of the texture. is there a way using nodes to create these strands ? as currently the skullcap is using a texture map, although you cant see the skullcap that well its still there....

Getting old and still making "art" without soiling myself, now that's success.

It would depend on the angle. If they are perfectly horizontal or vertical, it really doesn't matter, except perhaps to make a darker groove down (or across) the middle.

If they form a V shape, then we have to do a little math. Not hard, but it is "intermediate" work.

But you guys are having so much fun learning to fish instead of be fed a fish, I'm reluctant to give the answer.

Perhaps I give some clues instead.

Consider the mathematical expression Abs(U - .5), i.e. the absolute value of the distance from the current U value to the fixed value .5. What does that do?

Now consider procedural hair that forms horizontal hairs, using the V node to drive an fBm or Fractal_Sum. Suppose instead of using V to drive it, you used:

V + k * (Abs(U - .5))

where k is a small fraction such as .1 or .2. What does that do?

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More hints.

A Math:Sub node computes subtraction. Value_1 - Value_2 is computed.
Consider plugging a U into Value_1, setting Value_1 = 1 and Value_2 = .5. Plug that into ?.

A Math:Abs node computes absolute value. Whatever is plugged into Value_1 is multiplied with Value_1 and then the absolute value is computed. So if you were to plug a Math:Sub as described above into a Math:Abs, you'd have

Abs(U - .5)

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Of course, in matmatic you simply type:

k = .1
hairdriver = V + k * Abs(U - .5)

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If the hair was going the other way (vertical stripes instead of horizontal stripes) just swap the U and V values

k = .1
hairdriver = U + k * Abs(V - .5)

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So with that little bit of introduction, see if you can understand what's going on here.

---

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Now consider this refinement.

NOTE: This is not an entire hair shader - I'm showing you parts of a shader that do things in modular ways. You have to assemble these modules with other modules.

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A little bit closer to a hair shader. I'm relying on Poser Pro here for GC. If we want to include GC in this, we have to do a bit more.

I'm still not at a finished hair shader here. I'm just showing you how much you can do in the shader alone. There's no geometry yet - this is a one-sided square on the left.

At this point I'd switch to all matmatic - no building in the mat room - too many nodes. What I'd want now is to layer another entire set of this to produce some hairs that are not strictly parallel to these hairs. I want them to slide and cross each other in interesting ways.

When I'm done, I predict I'll have around 100 nodes.

---

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So this is where you guys were hiding all the interesting stuff. The "Anisotropic Node" thread sneakily turned into a procedural hair thread. You are so bookmarked! I guess I have no choice now but take some time off JCM-ing and make a hair prop or five. :biggrin:

-- I'm not mad at you, just Westphalian.

I had totally run aground, Bill... thank you for these clues! Something new to chew on! The hair in its current implementation look reasonable from a distance, but unacceptable up close:

BTW, the dress is the GC version of Hongyu's Jersey Dress - default texture. I'll bet even he didn't know it was meant to be that colour.

Can't wait to plug this all in and make it work. I remember your tickler post on RDNA Node Cult and thought: 'there's a huge difference between that and what we're coming up with... something missing, here'.

And yes, it is more fun digging around and trying to get it, given a few clues. I think I've come up with a whole arsenal of new materials just from trying to find hair. Of course, mucking around in scripts is still that goal to shoot for: been reading your loom and ooooo lots to get the head around, yet. Need a primer on maths and nodes, but I probably be writing it, given all the experiments I'm doing. Must say, though, for at least my stuff I can actually see the basis for the material better in script form than in the mat room, believe it or not.
Anyway, I'll publish the more interesting code I come up with, and no more weird stuff, I promise. You'll be able to follow it just fine.

I'm so excited about this I'm even turning away chocolate!

Monterey/Mint21.x/Win10 - Blender3.x - PP11.3(cm) - Musescore3.6.2

Wir sind gewohnt, daß die Menschen verhöhnen was sie nicht verstehen
[it is clear that humans have contempt for that which they do not understand] 

Metaphor of Chooks

bagginsbill:- I don't think i explained what i ment very well,lol..... i mean the hair eminating from a single point in the center of the shader and spreading outward towards the edges in a star type of effect... thankyou for the previous help... i must admit i thought "oh god hes going all math on me again",lol.... but i think im kinda understanding, and im gonna have a little play with what you have shown here....

i will post my shader soon too

Getting old and still making "art" without soiling myself, now that's success.

so BB you do nothing fancy with the anisotropic node? you only do custom hair strands and just the anisotropic node without any trick for the highlights?

Quote - so BB you do nothing fancy with the anisotropic node? you only do custom hair strands and just the anisotropic node without any trick for the highlights?

Even I don't know what I do, yet. I'm still figuring hair out like you guys are. However, there are a couple more things I do. So far, nobody has complained of the issue that I believe requires attention and additional care. I don't like just telling you guys "here's 50 nodes, it does something important". Up to know, you don't even seem to be aware of the problem. And, I'm not convinced I have the solution, either. So I'd rather wait for you guys to catch up to me. You might think of something I didn't and if I lead you to my current half-solution, I may prevent you from finding a better one.

But first, you need to discover the problem.

RV found a problem already - the artifacts. But there are more problems with the anisotropic node.

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Quote - bagginsbill:- I don't think i explained what i ment very well,lol..... i mean the hair eminating from a single point in the center of the shader and spreading outward towards the edges in a star type of effect... thankyou for the previous help... i must admit i thought "oh god hes going all math on me again",lol.... but i think im kinda understanding, and im gonna have a little play with what you have shown here....

i will post my shader soon too

OK I can do that too, but it's math. And then you'll probably say it isn't exactly a point, it's a short line, kind of a combination between the straight long part I did and the point part. Which would be a LOT more math.

I'm not really suggesting that hair has to be procedural - color maps are ok, especially for the scalp thingy. I just think it's good to know how to improve them with some procedural strands.

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this is the problem that i found .
this is how the render looks

this is the UV
is it normal that the anisotropic goes in the middle? 

if i now the same model light above. so for example the light is 100% above this model. there is almsot no specular.is the anisotropic changing on the angle? 
so for example if you want to do dramatic lighing on top of your head then you dont get specualr on the hair. this is what i noticed.

aha plus sometimes the specular gets very bright. super bright

Super bright! Yes.

It depends so much on the UV map density. When the UV contour lines get closer together, the intensity increases to 100 times brighter in certain places. This is not acceptable.

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i agree.

This is the way I prefer tackling this, Bill. Start at the beginning, and make sure core concepts are completely clear.

Quote - Consider the mathematical expression Abs(U - .5), i.e. the absolute value of the distance from the current U value to the fixed value .5. What does that do?

GMADone from the Node Cult defined u this way:
"I think of u (u_Texture_Coordinate, see image) as defining a line at the left of the texture (Zero or Black) with an even slope of positive 1 side to side so the result at the right of the texture is 1 or White, and a slope of zero up and down."

Know your enemy (or whatever). I can work with this description.

So, now I have sort of a point of reference for the expression (U - .5). The Abs bit is easy. Whatever U could be, subtract .5 and then turn the result into a positive (real?) number if it isn't already. So, per that definition, u is a range? (or: "even slope") of 0 to 1 from left to right, and a zero (0) range vertically.
I just have to nut that out thoroughly, or the rest of what you were doing isn't going to make any sense.

Maybe we should rename this thread "Anisotropics for Dummies".

Quote - Now consider procedural hair that forms horizontal hairs, using the V node to drive an fBm or Fractal_Sum. Suppose instead of using V to drive it, you used:
V + k * (Abs(U - .5))
where k is a small fraction such as .1 or .2. What does that do?

Right, so V works similarly to U, except the directions are turned 90 degrees. 0 to 1 vertical slope, 0 horizontal slope. And you're multiplying the sum of V + .1 and the absolute difference of U and .5.

Can U or V be represented as some numerical value, just so I can even begin to get a grip on this? Or will that actually prevent me from realizing the concept.

Major holes, here.

Monterey/Mint21.x/Win10 - Blender3.x - PP11.3(cm) - Musescore3.6.2

Wir sind gewohnt, daß die Menschen verhöhnen was sie nicht verstehen
[it is clear that humans have contempt for that which they do not understand] 

Metaphor of Chooks

Quote - Super bright! Yes.

It depends so much on the UV map density. When the UV contour lines get closer together, the intensity increases to 100 times brighter in certain places. This is not acceptable.

I'm not completely certain if I understand correctly, Bill. I have that sort of highlight on straight hair where the UVmap has no converging textures. I naturally assumed it was the angle of viewing and that what I was seeing at the crown was the combined result of a much higher sum of shader-brightened geometry and anisotropic mapping (if I can call it that: what is determined by the U-Highlight_Size and v_Highlight_Size) than what I saw halfway down the face of the hair geometry (say, at ear level, where you looked at the texture sagitally.).

So if by "converging" and UVmap density" you meant "seeing the UVmapped texture at an angle or side on", then I agree.

Monterey/Mint21.x/Win10 - Blender3.x - PP11.3(cm) - Musescore3.6.2

Wir sind gewohnt, daß die Menschen verhöhnen was sie nicht verstehen
[it is clear that humans have contempt for that which they do not understand] 

Metaphor of Chooks

Wow interesting thread. How did it ever end with those hair shaders? Did they move to a different thread?

 

And oh what a shame that all of Robynsveil's pictures aren't here anymore. It makes the thread sadly amputated...

 

(yes I know it's old! It just shows the dangers of hotlinking to external pictures in cases like these)

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You just can't put the words "Poserites" and "happy" in the same sentence - didn't you know that? LaurieA
  Using Poser since 2002. Currently at Version 11.1 - Win 10.

I suppose I could/should upload them again. I'm having a look at the fractal_sum node in PP2012 to see if the texture issues are still there. And yeah, you're right, TG: it makes for a clumsy thread without the piccies...

Monterey/Mint21.x/Win10 - Blender3.x - PP11.3(cm) - Musescore3.6.2

Wir sind gewohnt, daß die Menschen verhöhnen was sie nicht verstehen
[it is clear that humans have contempt for that which they do not understand] 

Metaphor of Chooks

i went back to the anisotropic shader. and i just realized what was wrong. the node doesnt work with anisotropic textures.

in 3D the only way to control where anisotropic direction is with a special texture that you can make in photoshop.

this is for example for a CD or DVD.

this is for metal like here .

 

if we could use this kind of textures we could also use them for hair. we could control in which direction its going.

 

or can we use those textures?

     I didn't know about the hair and brushed metal applications.  I have been using the anisotropic node to get sparkly water.

large scale...

.

small scale...

.

Poser 12, in feet.  

OSes:  Win7Prox64, Win7Ultx64

Silo Pro 2.5.6 64bit, Vue Infinite 2014.7, Genetica 4.0 Studio, UV Mapper Pro, UV Layout Pro, PhotoImpact X3, GIF Animator 5

Technically, water shouldn't have anisotropic highlights/reflections.  Anisotropic highlights come from fine grooves on a surface.  But it has a very cool effect on your sparkly water.  Which is to be expected - all your special effects are cool.

ice-boy- You're thinking about the problem and sort of missing a step.  The examples you're showing aren't useful maps for realistic anistotropic highlights, and are more like either a diffuse map with highlights and reflections burned in (first) or a bump map for scales (second).  The second doesn't even have a distribution around the center of the circles the way you seem to want.  Neither would be useful control maps for any kind of highlight.

Think about it like it's math.  U and V are just X and Y.  If you want a circle, you need the equation x ** 2 + y ** 2 = r ** 2.  That's a circle centered around 0, 0.  If you want that circle to shift from the center, then you need to add in the elements for setting the center.  IIRC , that's (x - x1) ** 2 + (y - y1)**2 = r ** 2, where the center is at x1, y1.  If you want the circles to repeat, then you need x1 and y1 to be a discrete (as in not continuous) function of x and y.  Something that will give you a series of numbers spaced apart by a function of r.  Sort of like a stair case function, where each step is r or r minus a bit high.

In general, if you want a map to control anisotropic highlights, or any other node for that matter, you have to consider what you're controlling.  Anisotropic has basically 3 parameters: intensity, U (x) scale, and V (y) scale (the other parameters don't seem to do anything).  So to control its distribution, you'd have to start mucking U and V scales.  Mind, those follow the UV map, not x and y in 3d space, so different mappings of the same mesh will have different effects.

A much simpler approach would be to stop thinking about how to mimic the effect of fine grooves and just make a map for fine grooves to add to your bump.  That said, it would probably be best to make one by hand, because maps like that metal one would just be totally off due to the burned in highlights and reflections.  Should be easy, though.  Just take random cloud in PS, use a radial blur filter on it, cut it into a circle, and then scale and duplicate it.