Node material input fields - ideas and discussion

[akos_kiss]

Hi All!

Just wanted to share an interesting way to manage attributes in complex node materials.

The basic idea is to create a selection of value that i want to have easy access to and add them as inputs in the node material. This is makes is easy to animate or change certain values of the materials. Or to have a quick access feature to bitmaps. When building multiple iterations of a material having a quick way to change out bitmaps is really helpful.
This can also apply to changing numerical values in a material. or have quick access to the opacity value of a layered node.

The main idea is to have this as a quick access solution for a few values that we change often.

If any of you have some useful or interesting way of working with the node materials i would love to hear

I don't know if this is a c4d limitation or a v-vray one, but my main gripe with the node material is that i can't "tunnel" these into to the node material inputs. So if i have a node material with a bunch of bitmaps i didn't have to open the node material editor, i could just selet the material and the attribute panel would display an "input" section where i can change all the values i connected as an "input".

Also i know this is a more advanced use case but i would love to know how the value node could be used in a more advanced way as i can see that there are a bunch of input modes and nested data types but it's a bit much. and for most of these input types there is no apparent way to input data.

[wolfgang_himmelfarb]

Very cool. I'm going to give this a go.

[akos_kiss]

HI All!
I've recently had some time to test a few other ideas to make use of the attributes field. I've attached a file of my findings and maybe it will help others in their daily work

1. Creating custom input fields for a materials attribute menu:
   I've noticed that some of the materials in the Asset Browser ( example is: Fabric Cotton 002 White 100cm) have an "Input" tab in the materials attributes. This example has the following settings promoted to the input tab: "size_in_cm" and "color". For complex node trees this could be a huge time saver as you just create an easily accessible input field for the most used settings that could be located on different nodes but with the input field they are all in one place.
2. Controlling material attributes with a User data fields and the user data nodes from and object in a material. I've added the ui elements to the viewport and you can check the user data elements on the NUll objects.
   This is also pretty easy to create and can help a lot with custom ID,s different variation of products and a whole lot. The attached file is pretty simple and things could be done a lot fancier

Feel free to edit ask any questions if you'd like to know more. I'm also on a learning curve about these features.


File attached PBV_VR_NODE_MAT_UI_02.zip