Material Best Practices

[TeaspoonVFX]

If you have objects and materials developed in Max or Maya (or others), what is the best way to get those materials into Nuke for rendering?

[georgi.zhekov]

Hello,
For now the only way is to export your objects and materials as a vrscene from your host application and import that through the vrscene node in Nuke. This is still in early implementation and needs a lot more work (there is no way for now to edit the imported geo or materials using the vrscene method), but give it a go and if you have some input on that it will be great.

Thank you,

[TeaspoonVFX]

Alrighty, Awesome. Will do.

I was currently working with VRProxies, but I'll give the .VRScene route a try and let you know what happens.

~tsp

[georgi.zhekov]

Well if only importing the geometry is good enough ( without material applied to it) - VRayProxy is a better option. You'll have a lot more control inside of Nuke - you can use Nuke's Apply Material node to assign different material for each part of your proxy as well.

Best regards,

[TeaspoonVFX]

I have the vrproxy method down (I think), but many of my shaders are a bit more complex than just a VRay material with some color and reflection. I'm a bit hesitant to try and rebuilt all the shaders within Nuke. But who knows, maybe it would be a really good exercise to force myself to rebuild them.

If I vrproxy a collection of objects into one, is it possible on the Nuke side to have a shader per sub-object? Material IDs or something?

[georgi.zhekov]

Yes, it is possible - if you have different shader applied to each sub-object while exporting the proxy - it will record the name of that shader and to which part is assigned. After that in Nuke you connect Apply Material node to your proxy and set it to use only the part you like. I've attached a screen to show you how it works.

Best regards,

[TeaspoonVFX]

Working on it. Thanks.

Just as a heads up, Nuke is displaying a bit of weirdness in its Apply Materials Node..

[georgi.zhekov]

Is this the official release build? We fixed a bug like this, but may be we missed something.

Can you try creating a new proxy node - and if this doesn't work, can you send us a scene with the problematic proxy so we can debug it.

Thank you,

[TeaspoonVFX]

This is a latest build. A restart to Nuke resolved the problem for now.

I am running into a problem where shaders are dropping if I translate the proxy geo in 3D space. I'm diving back into the scene today, so I'll let you know if the problem persists.