thesquirell wrote:Welcome Raphael!
Seeing your two art works you posted, and reading this, you seem like a man who knows his CG, and as Zom-B said, it is a really nice thing to see pros taking interest in Indigo. You will find that the guys here are amazing, as I experienced myself, being totally new to Indigo, and C4D. Zom-B, and bubs were of greatest help to me, finding my way through C4D and Indigo mat system, but I am sure you will find other members very useful, and helpful!
As for the custom Fresnel falloffs, and angle depended glossiness (exponent), I myself only noticed that effect going through mister Warwick's "Mastering V-Ray" lessons, and immediately started noticing it in Indigo. Since you already done a dispersion/volumetric scene (a hell of a job you did there), you see that Indigo capabilities are enormous. The only thing needed is actually to be true to reality, and as Ono said, tweaking IOR curves makes no physical sense (I will have to trust him on that). I have made these two simple rendering to show you, if that is the effect you are going for, the glossiness effect in Indigo. The engine is capable of calculating this effect, as Oscar said, and it does it by default. Now, I don't know if it's truly realistic to go from a rough surface at high angles, to a super glossy one at low,but, not being able to control it as you wish, I guess, is the Indigo's strategy in preventing us in doing something unrealistic. I know that artist's freedom is a great thing, but I guess that in unbiased rendering, the goal is to be as close as possible to reality, possibly sacrificing some features along the way. As for the mechanics behind these calculations, I guess that's a company's secret, and I really have no idea if it's just a Fresnel effect kicking in, or is it the exponent that's changing, or they both work together, but what I do know is that imitating the surface structure through bump maps, and normal maps, possibly displacement maps(not a good strategy though), changes a lot in Indigo. For instance, anisotropy effect is only achievable by such means in Indigo. But, as for the mentioned effect, it only remains to be seen what will the Indigo developers cook up next! Surely, it will be great as always!
Take care, and surprise us with some more of your awesome renderings!
Hey. Thanks a lot for your long long text. I really appreciate you putting so much time into this!
Also thank you for doing the test renderings. Thats awesome of you.
I have to admit that some of my knowledge also comes from Grant´s Mastering Vray.
The funny thing is that I had a very similar work flow then he does even before watching his great Tutorials.
Since you already done a dispersion/volumetric scene (a hell of a job you did there), you see that Indigo capabilities are enormous.
Yes Indeed! I have worked with other (Bi-Directional) Pathtracers before and did comparisons between them. And I have to day that Indigo had the best and fastest result for the prism scene!
I know that artist's freedom is a great thing, but I guess that in unbiased rendering, the goal is to be as close as possible to reality, possibly sacrificing some features along the way.
I can see the benefit here. I understand that the best way to achieve some physical behavior is of course to simulate it with physically correct algorithms. But sometimes renderers lack those calculations because there are not important enough for the majority of users. And thats the point where I normally get creative and use the renderers built in tools to achieve the effect I´m after.
I´m always doing lists, when using new renderers. Listing features that I miss (or to stupid to find or in Case of ISL code)
Right now on my list says following:
To avoid misunderstandings. When I say SHADER I do not mean a MATERIAL. I mean the component like Bitmap, ISL Normal etc. that goes for example in the diffuse channel of one material.
Layer shader: (for textures and other ISL shaders) Like in Photoshop. Where you can place textures / shaders on top of each other. Set their transparency and or mix them with mixing methods like add, multiply etc.
If it was to difficult to built a layer shader than at least a mix / blend shader. As in a blend material you have shader / texture slot A and shader / texture slot B and a mix value that also can be replaced with a texture or a shader.
A ramp shader: A shader where you can remap brightens and colors of a input bitmap or shader based on a ramp / curve. C4D users know what I´m talking about (Colorizer / Filter Shader). This is what I use inside the shaders the most. Just to fine tune the look of a bitmap or another shader I have loaded in.
Dirt / Ambient Occlusion shader (with a invert normal option): Especially with the invert normals option you are able to create worn edges and all sorts of aging effects. This would also greatly benefit from a layer shader as you could multiply the dirt with a texture to get more uneven / organic results. I do stuff like this in other engines all the time.
Support for Vertex Maps: This is another way to create more organic looking textures. You for example can mix two textures based on a vertex map. It really comes in handy from time to time.
Anisotropic Reflektions / Spec: This seems to be in development as I have seen in some posts from the devs. I just want to underline that I really appreciate this feature.
I think I will also post this list in the Bugs and Request forums. Hopefully the one or the other feature will find its way into a future version of Indigo
Cheers,
Raphael
You don´t dream in cryo.
