I would pay for material presets

[Da_elf]

I feel I have a BWM without the steering wheel

sounds more like you bought a BMW which has a stearing wheel but your looking for the manual titled "how to drive"

[jujubee]

lol.

I hear what he is saying, although I have a fairly good grasp on the materials now. It takes time. Make it 'too' easy for people and then it only makes more competition. However I did get a kick out of the SSS presets - those are nice.

VrayMaterials.de is hit or miss. Most of the people rating have no clue what they're doing so you often see 9 or 10 stars. I see stuff with 50 subdivisions which is often the first dead giveaway. But occasionally I find a hidden gem or at least bitmaps to work from.

[Neilg]

It doesnt happen much here, but threads like this remind me of cgarchitect a lot.
One thread will be saying they need presets, ease of use, and a quicker way to work - and the very next thread will be moaning about how too many people who dont understand what they're doing properly are winging/half arsing jobs and undercutting them. Cant have both!


I find vraymaterials combined with cgtextures is more than enough and the best we've ever had it, I cant honestly see why you'd want a set of presets on top of that.

[claude_tnt]

Make it 'too' easy for people and then it only makes more competition

why can't it be easy? are you afarid of competition?
here is a tip "no one can take away your "expertises" and or techniques you've developed. it's yours to keep from now until you die"

the purpose of computers/programs is to make stuff easier to do.. not harder to figure out and competition breeds innovation.. just ask Vlado..

[jujubee]

I'm just saying - that's what I think/suspect what people are trying to say when they don't want material presets. I can't see a reason why anyone would not want them other than it's taking extra time for Chaosgroup to develop it.

[Morne]

some of the ALREADY EXPERTS here

Next time I have a problem I'll just post it under general or problems since some of the experts here are actually here to help others like the forum is intended to do.

Thank you all for all your views and opinions and for those that have helped me in the past

[jujubee]

here is a tip "no one can take away your "expertises" and or techniques you've developed. it's yours to keep from now until you die"

Yeah - like when I helped simplify LWF for everyone to understand - now most everyone is using it. Apparently, they 'CAN' take away techniques. I should have just kept my mouth shut.

I've always been one for easier material presets too although I have a good grasp on the material settings already - but then again I'm just "lazy"...

[rmejia]

Did a quick google search and found this:
http://www.siger.lt/products/shaders_vpreset_pro.php

It's got a 50% discount until tomorrow!

[samuel_bubat]

I feel I have a BWM without the steering wheel

Sounds more like you have a BMW without a driving license

Seriously, I tried a lot of ready made materials in the past and I pretty soon
stopped using them.

1. If you are in 3D/Shading/Rendering than you should (MUST) know how to make materials
by yourself anyway. Most of the materials you are requesting are setup in a minute.

2. A lot of the ready made materials I tested were setup pretty bad. To much subdives
and a lot of other stuff that would just increase your render time. When I look at some
of the Vray Materials included in Evermotion Objects for example..
I just can shake my head.

3. Materials in general highly depend on the lighting of the scene, the object they
are applied to, the scene scale, the angle you are looking at them
and a lot of other factors.
Some materials work well with low subdives in one scene
and may require higher subdives in another setup.
The same applies to glossiness, fog, reflection, bump amount..
actually to any possible parameter. So if you have ready made materials
than you must expect to highly tweak them for your needs anyway wich implies that
you need to know what you are doing. And if you know what you are doing you will be able
to setup materials like metal, plastic, glass and others with just some clicks.

[claude_tnt]

Thank you jujubee. you're my hero!

Yeah - like when I helped simplify LWF for everyone to understand

I should have just kept my mouth shut.

Thank you for you help.. this is exactly what i am saying.. it should not be difficult to understand.. because it defeat the purpose of creation in the first place. btw..not to sound condesending but, have you thank Throb for his explanation for LWF? if I remember correctly,it was throb who open our eyes to LWF and i think he did a good job of mass planting of his technique in everyones mind, including yours, so that you could "simplify" his technique for the rest of "us" simple minded individuals..and as far as i remember..a few other people did try to simplify/teach the ways of LWF also....and i thank them too...

All of the above being said, I am all for Vray material presets like the other rendering plugins, and these can be used as a starting point for individual to tweek to their liking.


Best regards,
Claude

[glorybound]

pres-sets

Have you looked at these?
http://www.siger.lt/products/index_shaders_plugs.php

[jujubee]

not to sound condesending but, have you thank Throb for his explanation for LWF?

Yes. I thanked him and will continue to thank him for everything I have today. I wouldn't be here if it wasn't for him. He has put food on my table.

I've made no claim to take credit for how it was come up with, but I will say that I outlined it step by step in an easy to understand manner - even differentiating 'burning in' versus 'applying a curve.'

In that thread, there were a few experts (mostly compositors) who understood what he was talking about. And as they asked questions, the technique became even more confusing. But the majority of us had no clue what was going on so, the thread 'sat there' silent/ignored for months.

I was getting frustrated that every time I rendered, my colors would come out unpredictably. So I spent an entire WEEK experimenting with that method and trying to understand what was happening. I kept asking simple questions because I have a very simple mind. Then I outlined/asked how to do it more or less step-by-step to make sure that "I got it right", many pages into that mess.

Many times I sat there and thought about deleting those posts, but ultimately didn't out of respect for those that did take the time to help.

Shortly after those posts, you saw more and more people using it. Then people eventually started making tutorials and videos based upon those steps. Then you got people making minor adjustments to LWF and calling it 'other' names (such as naming after themselves) by simply adjusting one little item.

The problem remains (and the problem I initially brought up), is that most people still don't understand 'why' it is being used, 'how' to properly use it, and 'why it works' the way that it does. All the majority still know is press button A, B, C, D and get 'prettier' image.

In no ways was I bragging or boasting. I could have never come up with the idea in a million years - I'm just not that smart. The only reason why I brought it up was because claude_tnt stated:

here is a tip "no one can take away your "expertises" and or techniques you've developed. it's yours to keep from now until you die"

I completely disagree, and that's why I wrote that as an example - people CAN take away ideas and techniques, whether they are yours or not. A lot of really good artists actually keep quiet about their methods for this very reason, wrong or right... And sometimes they even purposely (I suspect) leave things confusing/obfuscated for others.

I've met plenty of them that DON'T want to share. I think it's very unfortunate, but that's what gives some people/companies a competitve advantage.

When I first started out well before LWF, my renderings were horrible. I kept asking people on this forum for help and to be honest, wasn't getting many answers. If you only knew how many people I asked to show me how to make a realistic daylight scene (there was probably at least 40), I got 0 replies. This is partly because many people protect their secrets, and some of them are honestly busy and can't be bothered. The other part was because I also sucked.

You think many people here want Chaos to come up with easy material settings? No - I think that would put more pressure on their businesses including my own. Is it good to understand the basics? Absolutely yes. But maybe I completely read them wrong and just being 'paranoid'...

To quote Albert Einstein:

"The secret to creativity is in hiding one's resources."

[jujubee]

I'll add one more thing.

It's a trade-off.

You had Maxwell and Fryrender - both very simple to use. However, they take forever to render and it's almost impossible to animate due to their simplicity in settings.

You have Vray that's more complicated understand, but if you know the program well, you can make it do wonderfully efficient things.

Personally, I agree with the original poster that it would be nice to have material presets.

[rmejia]

I think the quote is actually:

The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources.
Albert Einstein
US (German-born) physicist (1879 - 1955)

[joconnell]

Heya Morne,

It kind of sounds like you're in the repeating cycle of adjusting materials, lighting and so on and so forth to get the look / results you want and getting a tad frustrated by it all. It might be a case where you haven't developed a method of tweaking lighting and materials that suits you yet so you're kind of chasing your tail when it comes to getting the look you want.

The main issue is that materials and lighting are so inter-related that one has a major knock on effect on the other and vice versa - if you adjust the lights to suit the materials then you might knock off another part of a scene that worked fine before. I'd take a slightly different approach depending on the type of scene I'm dealing with depending if it's a single object / main object versus a scene with loads of objects like an architectural scene or interior.

If it's an architectural scene I'd normal work as follows - first off get the lighting sorted since it's likely to be a vray sun / sky setup. Apart from glass objects in the scene (which is a pretty standard mat, black diffuse, white reflect and white refract more or less) I'd assign a vray override material to the lot with a standard vray material with a diffuse colour of 220 grey so a slightly off white. Then I'd set up my vray sun, sky and camera start putting the sun in the place I think it'll work best for the shot. I'd turn my gamma up to 2.2 and knock on the vray linear workflow button too (not the best way to do it but it works fine for me). Once I've got the sun in the place I want and the light / shadows are shaped nicely I turn off the material override in vray. I found that in a lot of the arch vis shots I did there were a few main materials used within the scene and a lot of smaller less significant ones. I'd start off with the big ones of the walls, floors and ceilings. I'd make a vray material for each and ideally have selection sets for the objects that need each material - I'd apply the materials with the diffuse only first just to check if my lighting is still holiding up okay. In a lot of cases if you bring in something like a dark floor it's going to suck a lot of light so you might have to up the iso in the vray camera. Next when all of those are working well I'll start mixing in the reflection - For something like the floor I'll normally start with a medium gray value for the reflect and an ior of about 4 (it's an arbitrary choice really but just gives me enough to make it visible). Again do another test render and see how the amount holds up - I might have a reference of what I'd like it to look like (again if I had material setting for that look they may not react the same way in my lighting and environment setup) so I'll add or reduce the reflection amount until it's close to my reference. If I want to be really sexy (and this is generally done on a camera / shot basis) I'll put in a falloff map set to perpendicular / parallel and change the black / white curve so I get the reflections changing from visible to almost none - it's not something that happens very often in real life but it just looks good. You'll often get retouchers doing the same thing - heightening the shine on certain areas just for the sake of contrast / sexiness. Once I've got the main bits done I'll try things like adding in a little bit of very soft specular on the walls so you get a bit more variation in them (tiny values - might be around grey 20 and a low glossiness - .5 or less) and then on to the smaller objects in the scene.

For something where a single object or material is going to dominate like a car shot for example I'll first of all start off with a rough material - if it's a shiny object it'll probably be the diffuse colour, a fairly high reflection value and an ior of about 3 - this is purely to get a rough ballpark so I can start adding lights and see how they're affecting the object. I'll normally start off with one main light source that sets the overall direction of light so with a car this could be a very large vray light overhead. From this I can get a rough idea how my materials are reacting - I'll tweak the light at this point so it isn't clipping on any areas (or very little) and start playing with the reflectivity. Normally a shiny object for me is a single colour diffuse with a high reflectivity setting (the fresnel or falloff will kill most of it anyway) so once the first light goes in I'll start playing with the diffuse if it's burning out and the ior or a falloff map to tweak how quickly the reflections change between strong and weak. A lot of people will use an ior for a material but like everything, you nead to be able to tweak and enhance things to suit an angle so the perpendicular mode of the falloff map and some tweaking of it's falloff curve does it for me. Once I've got these basics in I'll start adding smaller secondary lights - they're positioned to bring out small contours on a model and can be a little fiddly to position - things like the place highlight tool come in very useful here. I'll spend quite a bit of time knocking lights on and off to see exactly what I'm getting from a specific light - there's no point in having it there if it doesn't contribute much. From here on in it's just a bit of balancing - placing lights in the right areas or tweaking the falloff to get what I want - You can do a lot by moving a light a small amount though to place a reflection exactly where you want.

The entire things is like a maths equation in some ways - Light position + Material + environment = render. If you don't know any of the three then you're a bit fucked really - if you start off by making your lighting as in an archvis render then you can leave that alone and work on your materials and envoronment. If you've got a single shiny object then you can put in a rough estimate of the material as a starting point, then build up your lighting, then once you've got a few bits in start to balance your materials and lighting and see how it goes!