V-Ray alSurface

[vladimir.nedev]

For tomorrow's nightly build ( 2016.10.15 ) I've added UI for the experimental V-Ray alSurface shader/material.

You need to separately download and manually install the V-Ray plug-in that implements this shader.
Download vrayalmtl3a.zip from here : https://github.com/ChaosGroup/vray_al_surface/releases
Then unzip it and copy the file vrayalmtl3a/Maya/windows.zip/vray_BRDFAlSurface.dll (need to unzip it) to C:\Program Files\Chaos Group\V-Ray\MODO x64\vraysl\plugins (this path will need modification, if you installed V-Ray for MODO in another location). Edit: There is no Mac OS support for now.

Here is a screen-shot of how the UI looks inside MODO.



You can read more about our implementation of the shader here : https://labs.chaosgroup.com/index.ph...urface-shader/
And also the original shader's docs : http://www.anderslanglands.com/alshaders/alSurface.html

If you have questions / comments, please leave them in this thread.

Greetings,
Vladimir Nedev

[neverko]

Very nice. Looking forward to trying it in action.

[John_Do]

So cool ! It's even usable in the shader tree, great job Vladimir! Can't wait to test it.

Is it supported in RT GPU ?

[Robert]

No Mac Version, no fun..

[yoshikai]

amazing Vray!
Thank you!!

[7enith]

sometimes I hate being a mac user

[bbgrid]

mac version please

[vlado]

We will be bundling the alSurface shader with V-Ray itself, at which point a Mac version will be included.

Best regards,
Vlado

[John_Do]

I played a bit with the new shader, it's great ! So I can reply to my question, it doesn't work with RT GPU for at the moment.

The glossy fresnel is a cool thing, especially when working with Megascans or textures from Substance Painter. And having two reflection layers is great too, I have never understand why the V-Ray material doesn't have at a least clearcoat layer.




For those interested in Megascans textures :

> when it's available, use AO map in the diffuse slot above albedo, in multiply mode
> when using V-Ray Material, use inverted Roughness map with sRGB colorspace for the glossiness, it's one map less to store compared to manage gloss. and rough. maps. Plus the conversion of the glossiness map to roughness is broken in Bridge.

[Robert]

Yeah the standard Vray Shader is quite old school. They can dump a lot shaders if they concentrate on that one. Anyhow also Modo's standard material can do a lot things. Maybe it would be possible to translate it to that shader model and make clearcoat and subsurface scattering work.

[vandigital]

This is great.

Hopefully you get the other shader features in like the fresnel switch for metals.

[John_Do]

I have just noticed that but I'd like to have a confirmation, normal maps don't work with aiSurface ?

[vlado]

I have just noticed that but I'd like to have a confirmation, normal maps don't work with aiSurface ?

Hm, worked for me when I tried it.

Best regards,
Vlado

[John_Do]

Yep sorry for this wrong statement, the normal map did weird thing and the smoothing was like disabled. Reloading the map solved the issue.

[vladimir.nedev]

For today's nightly build ( 2016.10.21 ), I've added the V-Ray alSurface material to the V-Ray for MODO installation.

Other improvements:

- better UI

- I initially removed the main bump controls, as that's already covered in the V-Ray Mtl Common tab and the built-it "Bump" and "Normal" effects.
But I have since re-added them for the next nightly build ( 2016.10.22 ), since they will be useful when importing the alSurface material from a .vrscene

- changed the default values for the various distance channels (bump amounts and SSS radii), since the old ones were setup for scenes that are in centimeters,
so previously the SSS radius was 1.5m instead of 1.5cm

- the alSurface can now be used as a sub-material of 2-sided/blend/override/etc materials

- MODO's "Diffuse Color" effect can now be used instead of "val Diffuse Color", just like with the V-Ray Material

Important: If you manually installed the alSurface plug-in from GitHub like instructed in my initial post, make sure to manually delete it before running the new installation.
Otherwise you will have two versions installed and this can lead to problems.



Greetings,
Vladimir Nedev