curvature map

[anchovy]

Id like to see a curvature map. Its one of the last really missing base shading functions. I know there isn't such a thing as smoothly varying derivative for polygons but I have seen some cheats to get around that. And with smoothed subds you get close to how renderman approaches it.

Any thoughts Vlado?

im sure youve seen this....

http://www.tomcowland.com/mentalray/...ure/index.html
http://www.rpmanager.com/plugins/TensionMod.htm
http://studentpages.scad.edu/~mparro.../curvature.htm

[anchovy]

anyone, else see a need for this?

Thanks

-Michael

Actually, what I really need to know is withing the scope of the sdk do you think its currently doable Vlado?

[Dubbie99]

I'd be very interested in this.
I wrote a version for Brazil but never figured out a nice way to smooth between polys.

[vlado]

I don't think you need anything V-Ray specific for this (f.e. the Tension modifier)? It can be done with the standard 3ds Max SDK. V-Ray can provide smooth texture derivatives during rendering (except across UV seams), but then again it is not particularly hard to compute them separately given the mesh.

Best regards,
Vlado

[samuel_bubat]

Well there isn´t exactly a shader but since some versions there ist that "render surface map" feature within max.
It has an "cavity map" and "density map" option that let´s you bakethose to an image file. Probabely not really what you are
looking for, but worth a look.