New or enhanced VRayBlendMtl

[zero-13]

I love working in Substance Painter, one of my favorite features is the ease of use and rapid feedback of it's masking generators. The current VRayBlendMtl combined with various procedural maps can do all of this but with a much slower, more disconnected, somewhat more fiddly workflow comparably speaking.

It would be amazing to have maybe an updated version of the VRayBlendMtl that would have maybe one click masking/blending implementations of edge wear, dirt etc. but with consolidated and simplified controls in one spot right in the material or one step deeper, but where all the various procedural masking options exist in this next level.

Perhaps what I'm describing is maybe a new procedural map that consolidates the functionality of several procedural maps into one new type of procedural specific to masking or selection map that accommodates, curvature, dirt, occlusion etc., not sure what might be easiest to implement?

I know all of this and more is currently achievable with the current VRayBlendMtl and other procedural V-Ray and Max maps but I feel there is an opportunity to greatly streamline and make more intuitive the creation of complex V-Ray materials and greatly add and enhance the speed, inspiration and fun of procedural material creation.

Material creation is already awesome and has been great in V-Ray from the beginning but I would love to see some expansion and additions that maybe lead to including an even more simplified and intuitive procedural materials workflow for V-Ray.

[zero-13]

This might be a dumb superfluous idea for many reasons I'm totally ignorant of?

If so, please feel free to let me know and I'll cast the dim flashlight that is my mind in another direction.

[vlado]

I’m having difficulty imagining exactly what you need; I haven’t used Substance designer too much. If you have any links to share, it could be helpful?

Keep in mind that Substance ultimately bakes everything to bitmaps to keep the performance; if you try to do all of the curvature, dirt etc procedurally, render times will go through the roof.

Best regards,
Vlado

[zero-13]

vlado Thank you for replying, I promise I'm not going to fan-boy out!

Sorry for my lack of clarity and rambling, I feared my thought may be an impractical odd and unnecessary one.

The best way I can illustrate what I was thinking is sharing some of the amazing V-Ray procedural materials tutorials by Grant Warwick. In this first video @ 12:06 Grant is using a VrayDirt map to select or "mask" portions of the car to receive procedural dust: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3MR1BNFlYNc

In the same way a VRayEdgesTex can be used to proceduraly create worn edges and other noise maps that can be further used to mask out other areas and ultimately create very organic and natural looking weathering or surface distress but all in a procedural way without any textures.

My thought was that Substance has "Generators" which are essentially purpose built procedural maps that create these selections or area specific masks, for curvature, edges and that can be further easily tweaked with noise maps, grunge maps etc.

So it's nothing that is missing from VRay at all,, my idea was mainly to create an addition that consolidates and simplifies somehow this procedural workflow.

Here is an example of how the generators work in Substance @5:02: https://youtu.be/4AKqBE3BUI0?t=302

Basically they are just creating a B&W mask that utilizes normal, curvature or height maps... my thinking is V-Ray has a way to do all of this but spread out among many maps, so perhaps there might be a way to create a single map utility purpose built for these types of material effects?

I hope that makes my weird thought a bit clearer. Still not sure it has any real utility though? In my dream world all I'd ever need is 3ds Max, ZBrush and V-Ray for everything.

[Ihno]

We need collapsible group boxes in the material editor. Something that turns a bunch of nodes into a single node with user specified ui.
But I'm afraid it'd be up to AD to do that.
You can create node networks and store them in a material library though. It is a little messy but it works.
One thing is missing unfortunately. A blur node. Probably there is none because it would render for ages(?)...

[zero-13]

Thanks for your reply and info. The main reason I was thinking theVrayBlendMtl might be the ideal location is the Blend amount for each material slot has a map slot where a map can be added and used to mask that specific material slot.

So maybe there could be a new procedural map, something like a " VraySurfaceFeatureSelectMtl" (lol speculative name needs some condensing)

This utility map could be used for many things but lets just say one of the main uses might be for the blending amount slot, or opacity of materials etc.

1. The new utility map might have a drop-down menu letting you select Curvature, edges, normals, whatever type of map that might aide in selecting the surface features of your geometry.

2. Below the drop-down would be various sliders and numeric fields condensed and simplified that would let you control the selection area of that feature.

3. So say you chose edges... there would be a few sliders that control the width or thickness of the edge selection, the strength or opacity of the selection, and maybe a noise or grunge slider that slides between a clean or rough selection.

4. besides the sliders to control the edge selection, there might be a button to add an additional layer with an identical drop-down, which would let you select another selection type to add to the original edge selection and further refine it.

5. The utility would essentially be creating a grey-scale map that masks out just the edges of your geometry so now you have nice procedural worn edges that can be easily tweaked without having to go back to an external app like Substance Painter and re-output textures.

Again, as Grant's awesome tutorials show, this killer procedural capability has always existed in V-Ray, so my desire would be to somehow have a more intuitive, faster and more centralized workflow, and this consolidated surface feature selection utility map is what I'm envisioning.

I just wanted to clumsily plant the idea around a more simplified procedural material creation, and let the smart people transform the dim image in my mind into a brilliant supernova of material creation magic.

Unless this is a way dumb idea, which I'm prepared to concede to?

[Vizioen]

http://www.enrichpro.com/en/richdirt/index.html might want to take a look at this, to get the ideas going. I've bought it a few years back but it's too much hassle if you're going for a certain look.

[zero-13]

Vizioen Thank you for posting this perfect example of what I was trying to articulate!

The RichDirt utility illustrates what I was imaging so much better... the way in which you can select features, adjusts the selections, how it lets you layer and add to those feature selections, and allows one to isolate those selections via Include / Exclude by object ID (Although a legacy Max list dialog for include exclude as used in VRay lights would be way more convenient).

This utility has a very specific intention and lots of complexity towards that goal... I'm hoping something could be developed that might be broader in intent but more simplified? By simplified, I just mean maybe fewer dialog boxes and parameters that are somewhat consolidated, i.e. to grow the selection, clean or distort the selection, and add to and refine the selection creatively via layering.

It would be amazing to be able to remove a bit of a complexity, shorten the creation time and make more intuitive the creation of various wear and weathering effects and more complex procedural materials.

I even came up with what is certainly a more condensed, but hopefully better name for this proposed feature... the "VrayMultiMask" utility!

[M.Max]

This is an interesting topic.
I think what you are looking for is very similar to THIS (Reply #1 and #7), but all done by the engine and hidden into simple controllers.
I would like to see some work in this direction but there is a few pros and cons that I think of :

Pros :
1-the simple workflow and the ease of experimenting will make it easier for the artists to add them and test different settings quickly which will push the quality further .. (it kinda reminds me with that renderer where you can change lights in realtime to get a perfect balance and people started doing great images relatively in more ease using it)
2-most beginners can be overwhelmed with the number of maps and workflows to mix them and youtube tutorials videos make it even worse. so set innovative, universal and user-friendly UI for that will make the renderer more attractive for them and again push the quality further as they otherwise won't know how to make such effects.

Cons :
1-adding more maps and newer workflow might be intimidating for mid-level artists
2-advanced users will start asking for more options
for example please add exclude for dirt , please add that X feature from Vray curvature .. add a slot for new bitmaps for control this, add output controls like the curve and offset per effect, blending modes like composite per effect and /or global ...etc
So you will end up with UI that replicate ( or even more )all the existing maps just under one map which is not good for user experience.
3-it is more of a concern than being a fact but rendertime wise (correct me if I'm wrong and most probably I'm ) I think making such huge map might be slower to render ( I remember reading for a GPU renderer that they chunk the shaders into smaller parts to get better performance and user will only use the part that he needs for this shader )

As I said above I would like to see this being considered so please consider my reply as +100 vote =D

[zero-13]

M.Max Yes, this is exactly the kind of thing I've been rambling on about, so glad to see others hoping for similar functionality!

Perhaps it would end up being closer to consolidations of functions that already exist, rather than re-inventing the wheel or creating a ton of these surface mapping functions from scratch?

I feel it's more like maybe organizing several per-existing utility maps and their functions under one universal, layer-able, blend-mode-able utility map? Indeed this is easier said than done, I definitely know.