Help needed with leaves

[gjess30]

Well after attempting to mimic the rendering example that came with my Archmodels purchase, I've given up trying my own way and would like some assistance from the experts here. I was able to get the shader tree basics to work insofar as having the 2-sided materials work for the leaves, but as you can see from my rendering vs Archmodels', I'm a long way from achieving that beautiful healthy foliage disbursement of sunlight. My leaves are ugly and lifeless. Can anyone share their material settings for getting their leaves to look as good as the Archmodels one? I'm even showing the maps I'm using if that will answer questions as to what I'm doing wrong. Thanks!!

jess

[ingoerik]

First you should use the bump texture for the translucency effect in the 2sided material and brighter diffuse maps for translucency color. But to give you more tips we need a screenshot of your schematic view to see how you connected all the maps.

[gadzooks]

Maybe this can help?

[gjess30]

Ok I messed around a bit more and managed some results, although some new issues have now arisen.

1.) Ingoerik, if I use the grayscale bump map as you suggested, the leaves basically turn white. I don't quite understand where I can change the "translucency color," either.
2.) Gadzooks, I used that tutorial to establish my basic schematic and settings but unfortunately those results aren't exactly what I'm looking for (the leaves don't allow all that much light to bleed through like in my original Archmodels example). Plus there's an already-made translucency map being used, and the particular tree model I'm using didn't come with a translucency map (so I had to make one, which I'm not sure is correct). This, however, helped a bit: https://www.chaosgroup.com/blog/port...ay-for-3ds-max

Anyway, a breakthrough was kind of made when I set the Front and Back materials to enable SSS hard wax model (which PixelFondue's tutorial didn't do) and the translucency map I created made the leaves glow a healthy green. I thought I had the whole process licked at this point until I noticed two big problems.

First, the bump map once again shows on BOTH sides of the leaves even though I've not only tried stacking the image maps in their "correct" order, plugging the bumps into only the Front material in the schematic, AND I even set all the materials to have no bump effect at all, the bump map continues to show. So I'm really frustrated and clueless about this one. Is this a bug or do I really not have any idea what I'm doing?

Second, I'm having a weird situation with the translucency of the leaves altogether. Only parts of the leaves are showing this effect while the rest of them remain opaque. I've tried deleting normals, applying different textures, etc., but nothing will make the light shine through ALL the leaves, only some of them. Once again, is this a bug or do I really not have any idea what I'm doing?

Here's the visual story of everything I've got going on in this scene. Again, your help is appreciated!

jess

[gjess30]

And here are the weird issues I'm having...

[ingoerik]

Oh well, you should follow the tutorial more closely. First, you have to switch off translucency in the VRay materials, since you use a 2sided material its useless. Next you should use the bump map as translucency map in the 2sided material since there it only uses greyscale information (the translucency intensity). And than you should duplicate your diffuse maps and make them translucency/sss maps, maybe with a bit lighter color; they deliver the transluceny color.

[gjess30]

In Greg's tutorial video though, he very clearly uses a full-color image map for his 2-sided translucency at the 16:23 mark, not a simple grayscale. I get what you're saying about vray only wanting a grayscale image for its 2-sided translucency value, that makes sense I guess since you're telling vray how much light passes through with black and white values instead of simply sliding the value bar up or down, but Greg used a color image map for his and got bolder colors bleeding through his leaves, as did I when I use a colored map rather than a grayscale image map. When I use a grayscale map, my leaves look completely lifeless and a single shade of green versus various bold hues when a colored map is used. I don't know, I'm pretty confused here...

Also, what's up with the bump map affecting both front and back surfaces? Why can't I disable it from the back face?

[ingoerik]

Okay, you have a translucency texture in Leaf 2 back, which is useless because we don't use translucency there, we use the 2sided material instead thats where you put the translucency texture. It works well with a colored texture too, just connect the texture value to the translucency texture in the 2sided material.