Shader Mixer bricks won't connect

AndrewJJP

I have a shader I use a lot which I adapted from a material. It has a nice shine which uses a top coat roughness map, and I turned that into a tilable texture, but as with any shader that uses generic maps, it doesn't play nicely with seams.

I want to make a procedural texture to replace the roughness map, and I have got a long way with this using Perlin Noise, as you can see by the first picture. I have found that I need to alter the tiling depending on what I apply the shader to, and so I'd like a slider to do that. I can easily set up a user parameter for this, but it has three values. It works, but it's a pain to use.

What I think I need is a brick that takes a single float and outputs a "P" (I'm not sure what "P" is). It looks like "Float3" should do the job. However, when I try to connect its output to the "Tiling" (as shown in the second picture), I get a "no entry" sign. It's not an isolated example. I couldn't connect the F output of a multiply to the F input of the Perlin Noise's "Lower Threshold". Does anyone know why some connections of the same types don't work? Sorry if this is obvious, this is the first time I've tried to make a shader.

And I suppose the main question. How do I make a single user parameter that sets all three values on the noise texture's "Tiling" to the same value?

I hope that makes sense, and thanks for any insight at all.

Richard Haseltine

P is point. Where is the Float brick coming from?

stem_athome

AndrewJJP said:

And I suppose the main question. How do I make a single user parameter that sets all three values on the noise texture's "Tiling" to the same value?

 Hi,

Use the "Direct Value" brick, set it to "float" or "int"

AndrewJJP

Richard Haseltine said:

P is point. Where is the Float brick coming from?

Thanks Richard, that makes perfect sense. It's from coming from a user parameter.

Three floats is a point in space. I tried the suggestion about direct value, and that worked, but also went against my understanding. I found I could right-click on the item in the brickyard to go to the online documentation!

I'm using quite an old version of Daz as this is my laptop and I've never updated it, it's 4.15. I'll try on my big machine later, but I found something that I can't imagine is expected. First, the documentation takes me to this page, which says "Page Not Found".

http://docs.daz3d.com/doku.php/public/software/dazstudio/4/referenceguide/interface/panes/shader_mixer/bricks/dzdirectvaluebrick/start

If I click on one level up on the breadcrumb bar on "Default Bricks", I go, I get a permission denied.

http://docs.daz3d.com/doku.php/public/software/dazstudio/4/referenceguide/interface/panes/shader_mixer/bricks/start

As it's http, I don't want to type my password for Daz, although I am signed in to the site.

Just mentioning it in case it's of interest.

 

http://docs.daz3d.com/doku.php/public/software/dazstudio/4/referenceguide/interface/panes/shader_mixer/bricks/dzdirectvaluebrick/start

AndrewJJP

stem_athome said:

AndrewJJP said:

And I suppose the main question. How do I make a single user parameter that sets all three values on the noise texture's "Tiling" to the same value?

 Hi,

Use the "Direct Value" brick, set it to "float" or "int"

Thanks, that did it!

stem_athome

AndrewJJP said:"

Thanks, that did it!

Hi,

Its been a while since I used shader mixer, so I looked again. You could of used the "Float 3" brick, you just needed to switch the brick to uniform output. Sorry for causing you extra work swapping bricks.

AndrewJJP

stem_athome said:

AndrewJJP said:"

Thanks, that did it!

Hi,

Its been a while since I used shader mixer, so I looked again. You could of used the "Float 3" brick, you just needed to switch the brick to uniform output. Sorry for causing you extra work swapping bricks.

No problem at all, in fact I got to see another of the bricks!

I've never used it before, beyond looking at the uber shader. The next step is to plug this into it...

Thanks again for your help.