How to create this water material in Modo?

[LukasEsch]

Hey everyone!

I'm super happy that V-Ray for MODO is finally shaping up!
Great job to everyone involved.

Here's my question:
1. I am trying to replicate a "water" material someone did in V-Ray for 3DS Max. Sadly I'm having a hard time understand how this needs to be "plugged together" in the Shader Tree.
Here's what he did (see photos as well):
Created a V-Ray Powershader Material -> Diffuse Brownish Color -> High reflection -> In the bump map slot he puts a map that mixes two different NOISE maps (stretched out to get that water tile look)
Can anyone really quickly outline how I'd replicate this in Modo? Thanks tons!

2. How can I assign a V-Ray Material only to one / few meshes?

-Lukas

[vladimir.nedev]

Can you post the complete 3ds Max scene file ?

Greetings,
Vladimir Nedev

[LukasEsch]

Hey Vladimir!

Sadly it's a paid video tutorial I'm following along and he didn't provide the .max file (concept art / matte painting focus).
If needed I can do my best to describe it some more along with more screens?

[vladimir.nedev]

You need to stack the two noise textures on top of one another in the shader tree.
I see the mix amount is another "noise texture". You need to drag and drop it on the top noise amount, so it becomes a layer mask.
If you can post screenshots of all materials/textures, I can try to replicate them. Preferably with better resolution as it is hard to see the values on these.

Greetings,
Vladimir Nedev

[BVA]

Lukas, please can you share a sample render of this material? I am curious what it would look like.

[LukasEsch]

@Vladimir Thanks tons! Sadly the video is compressed quite much so I it's hard to read most times. It is only that one Material though.
Any way you can post a screenshot how it would look in the shader tree?
I'm using the "V-Ray Noise" but I don't know how to exactly drop it to the top noise amount so it becomes a layerstack.
Sorry for being such an amateur with this.

Material:
Diffuse color: brownish muddy water color
Reflection Layer: BRDF Type: Blinn | Reflection Glossiness 0.94
Bump Input: Noise Mix Parameter : 2 different noise patterns (attached images)

But I think an image how they are just attached in Modo should be enough for me to replicate it.


@BVA:
Attached the final image!

[LukasEsch]

I'm getting closer and closer!
How can I add the "blending"/mix option for the two noise shaders though? Right now they are both applied to the same amount but it would be nice to have the option to tell it which one should be used stronger.
Unable to find a mix shader where I could plug in both noise shaders.

This is how it looks so far:



Another point: Anyone knows how I can get tiny lights to have a less bright reflection in the water? I want to get the look showed in the post above.

[BVA]

Lukas, you can add the two noises above each other in the shader tree. Then on the top one try to change the blending mode to add. You can set the opacity for both to have the one stronger than the other. I recently did water with this technique and it worked well.

[Dentzz]

I'm getting closer and closer!
How can I add the "blending"/mix option for the two noise shaders though? Right now they are both applied to the same amount but it would be nice to have the option to tell it which one should be used stronger.
Unable to find a mix shader where I could plug in both noise shaders.

Sorry if this repeating what you already know, think of the layers more like photoshop layers as opposed to plugging them in like you would in 3ds max or nuke. You can use the schematic view to plug stuff in but for doing simple mixes it is I think faster with layers. If you drag one Noise texture onto another one, the one on top will be the base and the one that you hit a plus and see is the Layer Mask. In the properties tab you can click on the mask and and change the blending mode as well as the masks opacity. You can also have both noise textures one on top of the other with both set to bump without the mask and adjust the opacity and blending mode. Still getting up to speed on vray so not 100% sure this is all working in Vray. Vray RTCPU doesn't seem to update when making adjustments to blending amount and mode, also I don't think on GPU rendering it works but still trying new 7/21 build.

Another point: Anyone knows how I can get tiny lights to have a less bright reflection in the water? I want to get the look showed in the post above.

Not sure what you are trying to do with the lights and the water I tried just making a water scene and here was about 10 minutes of messing around. Do you want the lights to not blow out to white?

[vladimir.nedev]

Another point: Anyone knows how I can get tiny lights to have a less bright reflection in the water? I want to get the look showed in the post above.

The lights, in the final 3ds Max image that you posted, look like very small spherical lights, not point lights.
In V-Ray for MODO, you can change a point light into a spherical light by going in the "V-Ray Light" tab,
with the point light selected, and then checking "Make spherical light", uncheck "Invisible" so the light is visible to the
camera, check "Visible to reflections" and possibly increase the "Sphere segments".
You can then change the radius of the sphere from the "Point Light" tab from "Radius".

Greetings,
Vladimir Nedev

[vladimir.nedev]

The "blend mode" and "opacity" of a layer mask are ignored in V-Ray for MODO. Only if the opacity is 0.0, the layer mask is turned off.
You can adjust the blend amount by setting the opacity of the top layer, not the layer mask.

I am attaching an example scene where 2 noise textures are mixed based on another noise texture.
In order to emulate the Mix texture from 3ds Max, you should stick to using the "Normal" blend mode.
Here is a screen-shot of the results :



Greetings,
Vlaadimir Nedev

[Dentzz]

Makes sense, so the mask is just a mask. Is being able to use the blend mode and opacity in a mask layer possible at some point in the future?

[vladimir.nedev]

Makes sense, so the mask is just a mask. Is being able to use the blend mode and opacity in a mask layer possible at some point in the future?

If I have the time to look at it again and can figure out what it is supposed to do , yes.

Greetings,
Vladimir Nedev

[Dentzz]

If I have the time to look at it again and can figure out what it is supposed to do , yes.

Greetings,
Vladimir Nedev

Great, not a critical thing but allows for more options blending and I think can help prevent over driving values.

[LukasEsch]

Thanks a lot everyone!
Definitely helped me tons in understanding how V-Ray works in Modo.

The water scene is looking quite good and the spherical lights made it a lot better. I'm still unable to get the long stretched white-orange reflection in the water, but I guess that's just a matter of tweaking the known settings.
If anyone knows how to make it look even better / closer to the tutorial image, I'd be happy to hear!