New User with two questions about materials.

nullerror40404

Hello Bryce community! I purchased Bryce about a week ago and I have been having a blast with this software. The simplicity combined with gorgeous results make this program so great. While most operations make sense I am having a bit or trouble with textures/materials. I have two questions in particular I would like to ask that I could not find an answer for online (or maybe I can't find the right location for this information). Please excuse any weird formatting like I said I am new to the forum.

Question #1

I have imported an object file that has an mtl file attached to it. All went smoothly until I wanted the material to have a bit of a gloss. I attempted to increase specularity but nothing happened. I then changed the specular color from black to white but instead ended up with this mess (see image at link below).

https://imgur.com/a/N4gBnKp

Is this an issue or maybe not possible with imported object files/mtls? If not is there a fix and/or workaround?

Question #2

Another weird thing with materials. When animating an object with a material the material seems to move while the object is moving instead of sticking to the object. Notice the column and pyramid materials in the attached video link. While this effect looks really cool and has inspired me to make use of it in a different scene it does not exactly work in this particular scene and I would like to "freeze" the textures I guess you could say. Is there a setting for this?

https://imgur.com/a/sEMuRHt

Thanks in advance! I have learned a lot of stuff from the this forum so thank you for that as well.

mermaid010

Hi Nullerror, welcome to the forum, I can't help you much with your questions but, regarding the animations, although I love animations, I don't do much of them. Maybe this link will help you.

https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/45629/

 

 

 

 

 

Horo

nullerror - welcome to Bryce and this forum.
Question 1, not sure what went wrong. Specular Color can be set, most of the time I use white. Specularity is the control of how much specular, 0 none, 100 max (you may know that already). Then, there is Specular Halo which has a light gray as default colour. Now if you keep it neutral (i.e. Red=Green=Blue) you can control the size of the bright spot. At black it is very small if you can see it at all, fully white makes about half of the object the Specular colour (excellent for CEL or Toon shaded objects). There is a huge difference between R=G=B 254 and 255. Default is 204 but often values between 248 and 253 can be useful.
Question 2, I made a very few animations long ago. Nevertheless, I think I know where the problem is. The texture on the object is probably set to World Space. In this mode, the texture is in the Bryce world and when you move the object, it moves to another location in the Bryce world and there the texture is different. Set the Mapping Mode (bottom right button on the texture) to Object Space. This maps the texture on the object and it stays the same if the object moves.

 

Horo

Question 1 I forgot to mention that Specular is finally controlled by the light source (sun, radial, spot, etc). There are two controls: Diffuse for the light and Specular for - you guessed it.

nullerror40404

Thank you so much Horo! I was able to fix the specular issue and the world space material. Only issue is that changing the material from world space to object space causes it to appear stretched on the object but I am guessing this means I will have to model the material (unless there is another work around). Again thank you so much for the quick response!

judykerr3d_e8cf35e3dc

nullerror40404 said:

Thank you so much Horo! I was able to fix the specular issue and the world space material. Only issue is that changing the material from world space to object space causes it to appear stretched on the object but I am guessing this means I will have to model the material (unless there is another work around). Again thank you so much for the quick response!

Hi nullerror40404. I just spotted your question about the stretched material - don't know if you have solved this yet, but if not you can adjust the material size in the Mat Lab. 

In the right pane of the Mat Lab, click on the top left button (Transformation Tools). This gives the Edit Textures pop-up.

There are 3 controls: the top one is for texture size, the middle one for rotation, and the bottom one for position. Each one has separate values for the X, Y and Z axes. 

To re-size the texture, use the top control. Overtype the current X, Y and Z values with LARGER values, which will make it repeat more times, making it look smaller.  Increase each value by the same amount to keep the texture's proportions correct. 

If your texture is stretched on just 1 axis, only increase the value on that axis. 

When you have adjusted the values, click on the bottom right button on the pop-up to save and close. 

The preview in the Mat Lab left pane should now show the effect of your changes. If it's still not right, repeat the adjustment in Edit Textures until it looks OK. This should work on both picture (2D) textures and procedural textures. Your texture mapping will play a part in this as well, and depending on the shape of the object you may find that Object Cubic gives you more control over the texture sizing than Object  Space. 

Hope this helps. 

akmerlow

If you allow me to use this thread for a question...
What's best way to get bitmap of material from a bryce? For example, you did something in DTE... What's optimal option to get a 2048x2048 (for example) flat image of material to use as texture in other application, maybe both "raw" and "affected by skylab"? not sure if just rendering in "top view" is best

Horo

akmerlow - I can't give you the ultimate best tip but a few ideas. Use a 2D-Face to put the material on. You can render it from the front, or from above. Set the camera FOV very low, less then 10° at Size 100% so there are less distortions towards the edges. Move the camera away accordingly. Render big, max is 4000 x 4000, you can scale it down afterwards using a graphics program, perhaps use some sharpening before reducing the size. Set the fully white sun so you get evenly distributed light on the 2D-Face (if camera above, looking down, set sun to Altitude 90°, the zenith). No Haze, no Clouds, Sun invisible, white backdrop. Such things render very fast and I invite you to experiment.

 

akmerlow

Horo, thanks for proposed variant. Will be trying.