Stochastic Flakes Tutorial

V-Ray V-Ray Common Tutorials, Tips & Tricks
1

Hi,

There was an interesting video posted up last month on stochastic flakes https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QQ5WJf_dmDA.

Is there a way to achieve this effect in the current version of Vray?

Thanks,

Tak

2

I will be posting the stochastic flakes material plugins soon; just need to fix a few things.

Best regards,
Vlado

3

Thank you Vlado - can’t wait to try it out!

Thanks,

Tak

4

I uploaded a test version of the material here:
https://ftp.chaosgroup.com/vlado/vray\_downloads/vraystochasticflakesmtl.rar

You can try it and let me know if there are any issues.

Best regards,
Vlado

5

hope Maya Version Too!!

6

That was quick and yes a Maya version would be great. However I do appreciate the release though.

Thanks again,

Tak

7

We need to make sure that the proof of concept works first. If the Max version works ok and when we fix any issues, we can think about a Maya recompile.

Best regards,
Vlado

8

Would this replace the current flake material? What are the advantages of this over the current flake material?

9

Eventually, yes.

What are the advantages of this over the current flake material?Less memory, no tiling of any sort, and better results generally.

Best regards,
Vlado

10

I’m currently trying to create a standard car paint shader using layers of flake material and although the results look promising the render times are getting up quite a bit. Will definitely try this out this week.
Thanks
Will

11

Hi Vlado

Having a play with the new shader now and it is awesome! Really impressive. Looking forward to building some nice shaders with this.

EDIT : Any reason its not working with render elements Mtl Select ?

Thanks for sharing.

Will.

12

The material select support is not added yet, will fix this.

Best regards,
Vlado

13

I’ve actually cheated and just used minus merge nodes in nuke from the base and coat so I kind of have a mtl select now anyway.

Whats also great is because its such a broad, full flake layer, you can actually go in and tweak that one flake layer into two or 3 layers with white point adjusts and gamma, giving you layers of flake from a single render. This can give you easy control on the bleached highlight flakes, etc. A huge improvement on the old flake. Actually feels like using the old Mental Ray car paint, which although only worked in the specular channel really, I found really handy and easier to work with than the Vray one.

14

Can you explain this a bit more? I’m curious what kind of effects you are after.

Best regards,
Vlado

15

Hi Vlado

Hopefully the image explains what I am doing with the shader in Nuke.

Flake and lacquer are from out the render as separate elements. Adjusted flakes are the added back to base paint as separate layers. Excuse poor spelling, PS has no auto correct :slight_smile:

Flakes.jpg
Flakes.jpg566×883 210 KB

16

Another quick update.

So I add some colour to the base and adjusted the colour again in post along with the adjustments to the flake to give the shader more depth. The first Orange layer is the original render with some tweaks to each layer to get the orange, the subsequent layers are the additional layers for the flakes.

Flakes2.jpg
Flakes2.jpg508×985 212 KB

17

Any updates on this shader? I was going to ask, it would be good if you could change the falloff similar to ggx in some way. Also is it possible to get some of the flakes casting bright highlights further away from the center highlight?

18

http://forums.chaosgroup.com/showthread.php?84615-Stochastic-flakes-plugin-take-2/page3

Here’s the new version. You can give it a try and if you cannot achieve the desired result with this one, we can add an option to behave as ggx.

Best regards,
Asen