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Forgive my ignorance here, but where specifically is the 'suface entry'? And how can I apply another shader so that it applies to the blendy mask and not the whole arms?
If you need to, you can go into image editor for the blend mask and change the tiling there.
I wasn't aware that this was possible, at all. Interesting! Thanks for pointing this out. I'm curious now though.. if I change the tiling through the image editor fields like this, does it save that paramater for future use? For example, if I created a product for sale, and used this image editor parameter method for tiling, will it open correctly on the end users system still tiled with those parameters? (This is really just a general question I guess, as using the image is editor for this purpose is not specific to your Blendy shader.)
Surface entry:
On a human figure, a surface is Arms, Fingernails, Face, and so on. Each of those is a surface that takes shader information.
There is, alas, no way to paste into Layer 2. I wish there was; instead you need to set layer 2 parameters by hand.
Erock: Image editor is a major unsung hero, while LIE gets all the applause... ;)
I BELIEVE image tiling information is saved when you make presets, but I don't know if there are exceptions when doing partial materials. Something to test.
@Oso3D - I tested it, saving the prop on one computer and moving it to another. All the tiling data was saved correctly.
So now in addition to your cool new Blendy shader, I've also learned some valuable information regarding the image editor in general! Thanks!
Glad to be of help!
There's a lot of bibs and bobs going on in Daz Studio, heh.
Will, I am a new Blendy user with a question: The documentation says that if I copy and paste a shader (I assume it means shader preset), it will go into the first layer. How do I load a shader preset into the second layer? Do I have to load every image map and value manually into every channel?
Edit: Another question: Where can I find documentation about the choices in the Blend Values mode and Blend Color mode?
You have to set the second layer manually, yes. (though hopefully the presets will cover some common cases)
Blend mode is a lot like Photoshop layer blends; additive, overlay, etc.
Blend Color mode applies to channels that are primarily about color, like Base Color, Translucency Color, and so on, while Blend Values mode covers channels that are typically the sorts of things you have grayscale, if there's a map at all.
The reason for the separation is that I found a lot of cases where you want very different behavior between blending things like metallicity and actual colors. Now, ideally it'd be nice to have, say, a different blend mode for every single parameter, but that would make the shader really really unmanageable for users.
Thanks for the answers. Bumbling along, I managed to create this from a sphere and a checkerboard mask.
Neat! I had a lot of fun playing with different masks and spheres and whatnot. I particularly like playing with the refraction to create weirdly complex glass and such
Here's my next attempt - G8M this time. He is wearing Giant HD skin with a giraffe skin blend on his face, lips and ears. It is hard to see in this light. His fingernails have the Blendy glow shader, but I think it amounted to about the same as if I had just changed them to emissive, since they don't have any patterned blend mask. I like the way they lit up the body and face.
I still don't know what I'm doing,
but I'm making neat stuff!
Thanks, Barbult. Your experiments are inspiring. I bought Blendy when it came out and have been too lazy to play with much since then.
Oso3D, it is great to have such a great alternative to LIE!
Thanks, I love to play with things. I only wish I had a better idea what I was doing.
Maybe it will come with time and experimentation.
I put in a support ticket about it 2 months ago, but maybe it will help if other people also report it.
This shader is insanely cool! It does some incredible stuff! I did some "thinking outside the box" to use it to fit my needs and it's a really fun shader to experiment with!
One of my upcoming products was made much cooler due to this awesome shader! Thank you, Will! <3
I was just thinking about learning Shader Mixer and rolling something like this for my own use for selectively remixing between different cloth materials, but I'm happy to be lazy and avoid the work. However, I didn't see a "Cutout Opacity 2" parameter in your parameter list in the beginning of the thread, which is something I definitely want. If I bought this, would it be hard for me to add it myself, i.e. is there something technically different about cutout opacity in ShaderMixer that makes it hard, or is it just an oversight/intentional choice?
Intentional choice. When thinking use cases, I couldn't think of a lot of cases where it would come up. Building a shader in shader mixer requires a bit of balance; the more options that exist, the more overwhelming and hard to use the shader becomes. Also, render speed takes a (modest) hit as you increase shader code.
The Uber Shader integrated into Daz Studio Iray renderer will adjust and take out some code that's not being used. Like if Metallic Flakes weight is 0, the shader's Metallic Flake bricks are removed when it's passed to the renderer. I think.
But if you want to either alter Blendy or create your own, yeah, just blend two different cutout maps.
Another option:
Set Refraction Index to 1, Thin Shell to On, and Share Glossy Inputs to Off.
Now, Refraction Weight 1 and 2 will effectively act like cutout.
Thanks, I'll give it a go!
Like Sean, I ran into the limit of the single cut-out opacity issue, and ended up having to manually combine the inverted blend mask with the opacity map for the 2nd layer in photoshop - which was mostly fine but made it a bit of pain to play with the tiling on the 2nd layer, since it meant having to edit and resave the opacity map again. Next time I'll try the refraction index trick!
Still, loving the things this shader lets me do, it definitely made things faster to put together!
It looks like the link to the Oso Blendy tutorial on the Read Me page has finally been fixed. :) I checked it about a week ago and saw that it was fixed but forgot to pop in to let you know.
I'm having a LOT of fun with Oso Blendy and have some products I'm working on that uses it. It's such a great product and I'm so happy that it's a merchant resource! Your products make me happy, Will!
I have to admit I kinda love the modern PBR shader world. I'm familiar with shaders and graphics terminology outside of daz iray, so thin-walled, refraction-index=1, refraction-weight producing same effect as opacity makes perfect sense in hindsight; I didn't have to come back to the thread to look it up, I was able to reconstruct it from memory logically. I know it won't make sense for most people, but still, it's a nice bonus.
I have a feeling performance is subtly hurt since I suspect opacity=0 allows Iray to skip running the rest of the shader, but unless you have big open areas of 100% transparency, it's not that big a deal--e.g. most of the time with clothes we're talking about fine-detail from lace meshes or such.
Also, having THREE opacity controls is actually nice. Like, if you have a dress with a keyhole you're probably not going to want to blend that out anyway, so logically you really want opacity_master*blend(opacity_material1,opacity_material2), so the refraction trick is probably ideal anyway. Thanks again.
After examining the templates made for this package, I made some templates of my own, built using the textures for a particular couple of garments as a guide as to where to things were on it, and against a black background I placed a white blob about where I wanted a change in appearance to appear. Basically, I want the garment to look wet where the little white blob is, while leaving the garment looking dry where the black is. I figured out that I have to go to the Surfaces tab and select the different surfaces in there, and then click the two-colored-white-globe icon to add the changes that make me able to apply my templates, and I've inserted a particular one of my templates into where my best-guess is that they're supposed to go, but upon rendering the scene with the garment in it, I am seeing exactly ZERO change in its appearance. Evidently I must be missing something here somewhere. And yes, I am using the iray shaders for the particular garment I'm trying to get this working on. That said, I am largely a novice at editting shaders.
I've tried applying my template onto User Parameters > Blend Mask, but also onto Base> Base Bump, Normal Map, and so on. And I am seeing no descernable change in appearance upon starting a test render. What am I missing here?
One thing I would do just to sanity check is to put a different color in one of the base colors, so you can verify it's actually creating any effect whatsoever.
I would also suggest using top coat to base the wet/dry effect off of; I find it creates a more dramatic look in many cases.
Let me know how it goes!
Also if you could screen capture your settings, particularly those for the blending, it might be helpful to see
Well, I added different iray color-shaders onto the different parts of the undies, and it did in fact verify to me which part was the section I was trying to add the wet spot to. Anyway, I had added my made template onto parts of Glossy > Bump and onto stuff in User Parameters, and maybe other places I've forgotten, but saw no noticible effect when I hit Render.
Blendy combines two different sets of values. So you need to set the two different layers of glossy. That would presumably be Glossy Roughness and Glossy Roughness 2; you want the wet spot to have a lower roughness (shinier).
Bump should be pretty irrelevant, and it's not part of Glossy.
Hmmmm.... I'm not seeing a Glossy Roughness 2 in there, I do see Glossy Layered Weight 2, Glossy Color 2, Glossy Reflectivty 2, Refraction Weight 2, Refraction Color 2, and Refraction Roughness 2. I'm guessing you meant one or more of those instead. Which of those should I focus more attention on?
Ok, approach:
Layer 1 (base material) is 'regular' cloth. Layer 2 is wet effect. Blend mask is essentially 'where is it wet.' For the shirt, I went with sweat stains around the color, chest, and armpits.
Base Color gray, Base Color 2 darker gray (since wet cloth tends to be darker)
Translucency weight 2 = .4 (since wet shirts tend to become a little translucent).
Glossy Color and Glossy Color 2 I set to medium gray, reduced Glossy Reflectivity to .2, glossy roughness .8. I tend to reduce the effect of glossy to what something looks normally/dry (some people do the reverse, but for Blendy this is recommended).
For Top Coat 2:
Top Coat Weight 2 = .3
Top Coat Roughness 2 = .4
Top Coat IOR 2 = 1.5
Demonstrated below. It might look better with bump maps. You can increase the top coat weight 2 to make it 'shinier' or increase Top coat ior 2, but it easily gets stupidly shiny.
I must be doing it wrong, or leaving a step out somewhere, because I'm still not getting any descernable change when I click Render.
Can I see your blend settings?
Under User Parameters, right?