VRayBlend vs. Composite

[vanderloo]

Can someone help me get some clarity on the difference between VRayBlend and Composite materials. As in what are advantages of each over the other and when to use one vs. the other.
I notice some of the experts prefer to use composites for creating textures with procedurals but I'm seeing a lot of people using Blend as well.
Happy 16!

[tashko.zashev]

They both will allows you to put material in layers and create more complex shaders. It is up to you to choose which one works best for your workflow. I would suggest V-Ray Blend to be used since it offers more options like simple mask setup better collaboration with other V-Ray materials and I also expect V-Ray Blend to be rendered faster in any project when V-Ray is the main render engine.

[Macker]

Vrayblend is a material, and composite is a map. Pretty fundamental difference there really.

I use both, a lot. I get an enormous amount of use out of the composite map because of the various blend modes that it allows, like Photoshop. The VRayblend material is the equivalent of the max shellac material, but doesn't break energy conservation laws to my understanding.

[vlado]

Vrayblend is a material, and composite is a map.

There is a Composite material actually; it's been there since forever. I don't recommend using it.

Best regards,
Vlado

[Macker]

Really? Never noticed it. I've always hated it when stock models use the shellac material to blend between things.

[AndresAhumada]

Hi vlado..
Why you dont recommend?

[vlado]

Why you dont recommend?

Because it's slow and because it is not physical. I mean the "Composite" *material*. The Composite *texture* is ok (even if it's a bit slow as well).

Best regards,
Vlado

[joconnell]

None of the built in 3dsmax materials output passes to render elements correctly either?

[vlado]

None of the built in 3dsmax materials output passes to render elements correctly either?

Yeah, that too.

Best regards,
Vlado

[AndresAhumada]

Hummmm, thx for answer!

[Nearl]

What would you recommend for applying multi textures? I've tried VrayHDRI maps in the VrayMultiSubTex...it consumes less RAM and renders faster, but with VrayDisplacementMOD (zbrush) I get breaks in my geometry near UV seam (edge continuity enabled). It looks like a zipper. I can reduce it but it's still apparent. I assigned the textures by poly ID instead of UV offset...not sure if that's a problem. The other method is using Max's Composite map with VrayHDRI maps with UV offset assigning the texture locations. I also used Max's displacement. This way takes a little longer to render and consumes double the ram, but no breaks in geo. I'm new to this workflow and I'm probably over thinking it...so, any advise would be appreciated.

Thanks

[vlado]

I'm not sure what you are trying to do - the composite texture and VRayMultiSubTex do totally different things in general. Can you post an example?

Best regards,
Vlado

[Nearl]

Sorry for the confusion. Basically, I have six 8k displacement maps from zbrush (converted to TiledEXR) that I'm trying to apply to a box. The textures have UV offsets of u-1v0, u0v0, u1v0, u2v0, u0v1, and u0v-1. Currently I'm manually setting this up but I'm sure there has to be an automated way to load and apply the textures.

I'll screenshot my setups once I get into work.

[Nearl]

I'm assuming my issue is splits around vertices. Is there a way around this? I'm probably doing something wrong.

Edge thresh – when Keep continuity is checked, this controls the extent to which maps on faces with different material IDs will be blended. Note that V-Ray can only guarantee edge continuity, but not vertex continuity (meaning that the surface will not have gaps along edges, but there may be splits around vertices). For this reason, you should keep this value small.

[vlado]

Hm, the "keep continuity" option was supposed to deal with this particular issue. Let me see if I can reproduce this here.

Best regards,
Vlado