I’m in search of the optimal shader settings for your typical white wall/ceiling boards/bulkheads that looks good, doesn’t burn and renders this century.
This is my current settings that gives me good results, but I think it could do with some updating:
Diffuse: 220,220,220
Reflect: Full White (255,255,255)
Fresnel: Ticked
Refl Gloss: 0.65
Subdivs: 128
I’m thinking that perhaps I can change the reflection from full white, to maybe mid grey (128,128,128 )
Anybody know what Bertrand or Peter’s settings are or maybe care to share your take on this?
One question, when you guys use almost white diffuse + reflection for walls, I know that VRay does use energy conservation law, but when having the reflection does the GI bounce less from surface? and we need to turn on Reflect GI Caustics to compensate the light amount bounced from surface?
Just my 2 cents :
I tend to use my white at 240 (220 seems a bit low for white no?)
Highlight at 0.65 but I set my reflect glossy at 0.85 ( I like to see the reflection a bit sharper and it renders a bit quicker)
Subdiv 64-256 depending on the subdiv of the rest of the scene (dmc/light/global/etc) the samplerate pass is your friend!
I like to set the roughness at 0.5 when it’s been hit by straight sunlight to avoid having too much of overbright areas.
I still struggle to use this one with the right approche, if you guys have thoughts?
I would love to know Peter’s ans Bertrand’s settings like you said though.
I’ve always avoided LWF/gamma discussions as I have a pretty out of date technique which was born out of a distrust of how MAX handles that sort of stuff, but if you are using some kind of gamma corrected workflow, do you also colour correct your plain colour values or are you just guessing values?
My white value is 230 but then that goes in a color correction map with gamma set at set at 0.4545
reflection amount was just 75 and glossiness 0.6
Interesting that you tried roughness too Stan, I’m pretty sure I tried once too but really could never see any noticeable difference
Hey there’s nothing wrong with distrusting how Max handles anything!
I do gamma correct rbg values using the VRayColor map, for example if I’m given a pantone reference as an rgb. I also scale them down so that none of the rbg components are above 180. I do the same to bitmaps by setting the ‘RGB Level’ in the output section to between 0.7 and 0.8. This makes sense to me as nothing should be brighter than my white paint.
As I said, these values have crept down over the years and once I got used to working with darker materials I actually found scene lighting easier. Because there is less contrast between light materials and darker ones I can use stronger lights without the lighter materials blowing out. There is also plenty of headroom increasing the brightness of individual materials to create a particular look. I guess it all boils down to personal preference.
my thinking is that if say a particular wallpaper is being used with an exact shade of green then if I need to have a plain wall with that same green then I need to gamma 2.2 it as well.. I did try turning on the MAX gamma settings at the start of my last project, but once I found that I’d still need to inverse gamma all my colours anyway I gave up the idea of changing my workflow
Yeah, I never really saw any difference with roughness apart from materials where the sun is hitting straight on it and it would be completely over-bright, it seems that the roughness is actually pulling everything back a little bit like if it was doing a local “HSV exposential” :-p
I can’t really explain it better, it’s still one of those dark areas in VRay for me, I wish I could understand it correctly, if you guys have any tips, let me know
To know that your guys are putting sometime 180 as a white point, and tone down everthing, make me think it’s quite a battle to have correct color codes from client. I guess we allways have to play with it cause of the reflection and shadows. Clients doesn’t allways understand that it actually affect the diffuse color
Stan
Technically your paints should be made up of two layers. A blurry Base coat of glossiness .5-7 and a top coat with no fresnel, but blended over the top with a fresnel map.
This should be a low value 1.2, 1.3 and it should be highly glossy.
Go analyze a white painted wall…
Front on you see no reflection but side on it almost becomes a mirror.
I agree, our white walls are nothing close to a mirror. Even difficult to appreciate any sort of reflection. Are your walls painted with gloss paint? (mmm…nice!)
I think there are big difference in white walls too.
For example in the area I live, most of the building are white washed and this is much diferent than standard exterior white paint.
White-washed walls have a very reflective nature and almost translucent that increase the brightness with kind of an SSS effect. (This is not an scientific explanation at all, I don’t know about the chemistry but just my impressions).
On the other hand, the aqua based white paints have rather different nature and they absorb some of the light and are less brighter than white-washed walls.
For interiors, I think gypsum-based white pilaster + paint is much diferent than the plastic paint as well.
I remember WAAAYYY back when the LWF thing first appeared, Lele did some tuts and he suggested to adjust the output of all bitmaps and colours in the diffuse, to something like 0.225 I think it was. That basically made everything MUCH darker, but it rendered perfect. Then at some point we got “Linear” added into Color Mapping that wasnt there before, and I think they fixed they VRaySky output (that was too dark at the time) and we stopped using the 0.225 output setting. It was couple years ago so can’t remember exactly why but it had something to do with VRay being “smarter” in newer versions.
However this thread is making me think to re-look at Lele’s initial idea, and maybe go for an output of something like 0.6 or 0.65 on everything.
If only I can get Olly’s VMC script to set all my diffuse bitmap outputs to that and also if it doesnt have a bitmap, set a vraycolor output. Of course it should also check if there isn’t already some kind of output adjustment on it.
Morne: An small maxscript code that will do this for VrayMaterials only, color and bitmaptexture… though someone may need or improve
BitmapRGBLevel=0.65
ColorRGBMultiplier=0.65
fn ProcessMap Map =
(
case (classof Map) of
(
BitmapTexture : Map.output.rgb_level=BitmapRGBLevel
/* default : -- or use Output map
(
newMap=Output name:("Modified_"+Map.name) map1:(copy map)
newMap.output.rgb_level=BitmapRGBLevel
replaceInstances map newMap
) */
)
Map
)
fn ProcessMtl Mtl =
(
case (classof Mtl) of
(
VrayMtl :
(
modifiedColor=VrayColor color:Mtl.Diffuse rgb_multiplier:ColorRGBMultiplier
if Mtl.texmap_diffuse != undefined
then --diffuse slot is busy
(
modifiedMap = ProcessMap Mtl.texmap_diffuse
if Mtl.texmap_diffuse_on
then
(
if Mtl.texmap_diffuse_multiplier==100
then -- diffuse map is not mixed with color
(
modifiedMap
)
else-- diffuse map is mixed with color
(
Mtl.texmap_diffuse= Mix map1:modifiedColor map2:modifiedMap mixAmount:Mtl.texmap_diffuse_multiplier
Mtl.texmap_diffuse_multiplier=100
)
)
else -- diffuse slot is busy but is disabled
(
Mtl.texmap_diffuse= Mix map1:modifiedColor map2:modifiedMap
Mtl.texmap_diffuse_multiplier=100
)
)
else --diffuse slot is empty, can be replaced with VrayColor map
(
Mtl.texmap_diffuse=modifiedColor
Mtl.texmap_diffuse_on=true
)
)
Default : format "% is not supported, please code it yourself\n" (classof Mtl)
)
)
for class in material.classes do for Mtl in getClassInstances class do ProcessMtl Mtl
Ok let me rephrase. On SOME white paints grazing angles can produce highly glossy reflections.
Obviously there is a shitload of different kinds of paint but the general setup I described should still work, just lower the glossiness on the top coat.
So like .5 base, .7 top or WHATEVER looks right.
Basically, some materials require multiple lobes and this is the approach ILM takes in building their shaders. (modified cook torrence BRDF with fresnel nesting which basically translates to layered reflections)
