Shader Creating & Settings for Carrara - Q&A - Come One, Come All

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  • wgdjohnwgdjohn Posts: 2,634

    I've updated my second post on Page 2 to include PhilW's helpful list... of which are which... 2D and 3D shaders... it's also listed a few posts back.

  • wgdjohnwgdjohn Posts: 2,634

    By Golly...  Was playing around with Enhance: C by Digital Carvers Guild and actually learned something.  Included is the scene, settings and the shader settings saved to a preset file... requires Enhance: C for the letters... Oops forgot to mention that the CarrarArtists logo, a very simple room with other Carrara shaders modified by me. :)  The Fractal/X Flame are basically the default with a few tweeks to some settings but I didn't notice any change when test rendering.

    Note that the CarrarArtist logo is still in WIP stage... looks OK but I still want to make a change or to in the Vertex Modeler... just cause I'm picky. :)

    CarrarArtist_Shading_render.png
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  • MistaraMistara Posts: 38,675

    rainbows!!

  • MistaraMistara Posts: 38,675
    edited May 2017

    there more to phong than just setting the lighting model

    nice still life promo, not sure if these are phong or anistropic

    >.<  has to finish a spreadsheet at work before i can play with shaders

    Post edited by Mistara on
  • wgdjohnwgdjohn Posts: 2,634
    Mistara said:

    there more to phong than just setting the lighting model

    nice still life promo, not sure if these are
    [cut pic]

    >.<  has to finish a spreadsheet at work before i can play with shaders

    Are'nt phong and anistropic used in tandem?

  • wgdjohnwgdjohn Posts: 2,634
    edited June 2017

    DCG Shaders ... which are 2D or 3D...

    • Enhance:C shaders/functions are listed on it's product page at DCG.  They can be either 2D, 3D or both.
    • Shader Ops, Shader Ops 2 and some of Shaders Plus are generally whatever their children are.
    • Anything Goos, Terrain Tools and Wireframe Pro are 3Dish... they follow edges on a 3D mesh.

    Thanks go to Eric for providing the above.

    I'll compile a list of all including all of Enhance:C and place it on page 2 later.

    Post edited by wgdjohn on
  • MistaraMistara Posts: 38,675
    wgdjohn said:
    Mistara said:

    there more to phong than just setting the lighting model

    nice still life promo, not sure if these are
    [cut pic]

    >.<  has to finish a spreadsheet at work before i can play with shaders

    Are'nt phong and anistropic used in tandem?

     

    is either or in the dropdown list

     

    to put an image in the sss channel i had to copy paste the image over the channel to get the options.
    (calling them channels dunno proper term for it)

    sss just sjows a color swatch

    dont see how to manually change to show the texture map options?

     

    seems there some secrets in the shader room guismiley

     

  • MarkIsSleepyMarkIsSleepy Posts: 1,496
    edited June 2017

     

    Mistara said:

     

    to put an image in the sss channel i had to copy paste the image over the channel to get the options.
    (calling them channels dunno proper term for it)

    sss just sjows a color swatch

    dont see how to manually change to show the texture map options?

     

    seems there some secrets in the shader room guismiley

     

    I don't think Carrara will recognize a texture in the SSS channel. It lets you drop one in there but you loose all the subsurface options and as far as I can tell, Carrara ignores that channel if it is set to anything other that Subsurface Scattering. I think it is meant to just be a color. 

    The only way to use a map with SSS in Carrara's native renderer AFAIK is to use a multichannel mixer. Put the exact same multichannel shader in both Source 1 and Source 2 and your SSS map in the Blender. In Source 1 set the color chip for the SSS to the darkest color in the SSS map and in Source 2 set the color to the lightest color in the SSS map (I might have that reversed - if it looks weird, invert the SSS map).

    Here's an example where the only light in the scene is a strong spotlight behind the sphere, so all color on the camera side of the sphere is coming from the SSS.

     

     I have two shaders, exactly the same except for different colors in the SSS color chip, being mixed by a tiles function:

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    Post edited by MarkIsSleepy on
  • wgdjohnwgdjohn Posts: 2,634

    Thanks Misty...  foundit

  • wgdjohnwgdjohn Posts: 2,634
    edited October 2017

    Trying to create eye reflections/highlights to an eyeball I modeled, my first.  Wonder if anyone has suggestions as to what procedural shader I might use for the white reflection in pupil.

    Also for an iris that looks somewhat real tried adding a muti-mixer for a somewhat realistic look... no luck there either.  I used green for source 1 and brown/tan for source 2... not landing on on a good blender I just used fractal noise as blender which looks nothing like an iris of course.  I'd tried a few Carrara settings like lines as well as some DCG shaders. I suspect that this will need to be a multi multi mixer to get all the differences in color that the iris has.

    Wondering if I'm wasting my time and should use texture maps for each instead.

     

    Post edited by wgdjohn on
  • MarkIsSleepyMarkIsSleepy Posts: 1,496
    wgdjohn said:

    Trying to create eye reflections/highlights to an eyeball I modeled, my first.  Wonder if anyone has suggestions as to what procedural shader I might use for the white reflection in pupil.

    Also for an iris that looks somewhat real tried adding a muti-mixer for a somewhat realistic look... no luck there either.  I used green for source 1 and brown/tan for source 2... not landing on on a good blender I just used fractal noise as blender which looks nothing like an iris of course.  I'd tried a few Carrara settilngs like lines as well as some DCG shaders. I suspect that this will need to be a multi multi mixer to get all the differences in color that the iris has.

    Wondering if I'm wasting my time and should use texture maps for each instead.

    For the reflection in the pupil - is there a reason you can't just use highlight/shininess and actual reflection?

    For the iris - I've played around with this before too and could not find a procedural way to replicate the way lines appear to radiate from the center in an eye. It might be possible to do with the forumula funciton, but I've never been able to figure out what the effect is called to try and look up the math. Searching radial zoom blur finds the right kind of images, but if you add the word math or formula to that all that comes up is the math for a smooth radial blur, which we already have a function for.  It's probably best to just use an image for the iris.

  • wgdjohnwgdjohn Posts: 2,634
    MDO2010 said:
    wgdjohn said:

    Trying to create eye reflections/highlights to an eyeball I modeled, my first.  Wonder if anyone has suggestions as to what procedural shader I might use for the white reflection in pupil.

    Also for an iris that looks somewhat real tried adding a muti-mixer for a somewhat realistic look... no luck there either.  I used green for source 1 and brown/tan for source 2... not landing on on a good blender I just used fractal noise as blender which looks nothing like an iris of course.  I'd tried a few Carrara settilngs like lines as well as some DCG shaders. I suspect that this will need to be a multi multi mixer to get all the differences in color that the iris has.

    Wondering if I'm wasting my time and should use texture maps for each instead.

    For the reflection in the pupil - is there a reason you can't just use highlight/shininess and actual reflection?

    Those were the first things adjusted... I should have pointed out that this a Toon looking eyeball with some semblance to a real eyeball. Was hoping to put at least 1 squarish white highlight... more and of different sizes would work good.  I'll mess around with highlight/shininess more as I have the highlight a bit tight right now... should add more shininess also.  Had to laugh at myself... noticed after my first test renders that there was no light in the scene... doh!  I moved it to a new scene where I explored even more... lucky I caught it early... that'll teach me to pay more attention when deleting uneeded stuff from an existing scene.

    MDO2010 said:

    [cut]  It's probably best to just use an image for the iris.

    Will have to get on that... for now it does'nt look bad for a first try or model..  next one needs to be modeled different... will post my model mistake in Modeling thread with pic.

  • HeadwaxHeadwax Posts: 9,987
    edited June 2017
    wgdjohn said:

    Trying to create eye reflections/highlights to an eyeball I modeled, my first.  Wonder if anyone has suggestions as to what procedural shader I might use for the white reflection in pupil.

    Also for an iris that looks somewhat real tried adding a muti-mixer for a somewhat realistic look... no luck there either.  I used green for source 1 and brown/tan for source 2... not landing on on a good blender I just used fractal noise as blender which looks nothing like an iris of course.  I'd tried a few Carrara settilngs like lines as well as some DCG shaders. I suspect that this will need to be a multi multi mixer to get all the differences in color that the iris has.

    Wondering if I'm wasting my time and should use texture maps for each instead.

     

    It's no help but I use PhilW's excellent product for this. And if I forget I just paint them in in post. Easy peasy :)

    Irises.... pigment... consider three layers of pigent one upon the other, the bottom one is blue, the mid one is kinda yellowy and the top one is fairly dark brown - take away the top one and you have blue and yellow (iris are slightly translucent) - so depending on the mix you get green, take away the mid layer as well then you have blue - but in real life there are islands of colour from each layer that remain - so you get mixed colours but also freckles etc, then the iris pigment wil look a little denser when the pupil is dlated - you also get dark rings around the periphery sometimes - and in older peope you get 'arcus senilus' a white ring band around the cornea where it meets the limbus (conjuncitiva   -)

    The iris is also muscle so you can see the muscle tissue if you look closely _  if you want to do procedurals I'd try with an elongated cellular parameter in the blender - if you can elongate it enough

     

     

    Great thread, thanks for starting this, lots of good data.

    Has anyone mentioned Philemeno's Triplanar mod?  - spiffing for un uveed models.

     

    Ps you can see the way the iris fibres are here - also see little islands of remnat top layer pigment near the centre

     

    better pic for the 'islands' of pigment

     

    Post edited by Headwax on
  • wgdjohnwgdjohn Posts: 2,634
    edited June 2017

    Thanks Andrew,  I also have Phil's excellent product.  I'd like to design more like your pics show or similar... this was my first attempt an modeling an eyeball... I now know how not to model one. :)  I'll probably post to Modeling thread to show what NOT to do.

    Oddly enough... my shader in next post looks a bit similar.

    Post edited by wgdjohn on
  • wgdjohnwgdjohn Posts: 2,634

    Crazy John's Shader:  This was a happy accident... I created a vertex wall then started messing with shader settings.  Looking similar to what I wanted it was back to the assemble room to place it for a background.  It wasn't filling the Production Frame so I resized it.  Then I musta entered a scaling on Z setting wrong... and back to the Shader Room for more refining.  Below is what I came up with.

    Also included in the .car scene file in the .zip.  Please let me know if you have any problems with it not loading the shader or my vertex wall and I'll fix/update that.

    Note:  You could probably remove the DCG shader and use a Carrara noise or other function to get much the same effect.

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  • HeadwaxHeadwax Posts: 9,987
    edited June 2017

    nice shader, sorry I'm away from carrara computer so cant test it , thanks for sharing

    Post edited by Headwax on
  • wgdjohnwgdjohn Posts: 2,634

    No problem... hope you enjoy it... or at least get a chuckle. :)

    ot:  Luckily I caught your vid.

  • wgdjohnwgdjohn Posts: 2,634

    I've fallen and can't get up! Ha

    The reason for my absence....well last wed I fell and broke my hip (trash can - 1, Me - 0) and am currently in rehab learning to walk again. ???????? Patiently waiting until I can return! 

  • sorry to hear that - hope you heal quickly and well

  • wgdjohnwgdjohn Posts: 2,634

    Thanks Mosk the Scribe...  Just got back from rehab yesterday... finally am able to move leg a bit but much much better than first week after.  I've been leaving all the details of what happened in WGD Crazy Artwerks along with some fun I had with the PTs and other patients.

  • wgdjohnwgdjohn Posts: 2,634

    The Carrara Challenge #36 - Pinups and Cheesecake and Hunks - Oh My! is undeway and there are mentions by PhiW, magaremoto and Dartanbeck as well a shader settings by Jonstark here... be sure to read afterwards for more hints on the settings and progress also.

  • DartanbeckDartanbeck Posts: 21,550
    edited October 2017

     

    MDO2010 said:

     

     

    I don't think Carrara will recognize a texture in the SSS channel. It lets you drop one in there but you loose all the subsurface options and as far as I can tell, Carrara ignores that channel if it is set to anything other that Subsurface Scattering. I think it is meant to just be a color. 

     

    The only way to use a map with SSS in Carrara's native renderer AFAIK is to use a multichannel mixer. Put the exact same multichannel shader in both Source 1 and Source 2 and your SSS map in the Blender. In Source 1 set the color chip for the SSS to the darkest color in the S


    SS map and in Source 2 set the color to the lightest color in the SSS map (I might have that reversed - if it looks weird, invert the SSS map).

    Here's an example where the only light in the scene is a strong spotlight behind the sphere, so all color on the camera side of the sphere is coming from the SSS.

     

     I have two shaders, exactly the same except for different colors in the SSS color chip, being mixed by a tiles function:

    Coolest trick EVER!!! Wow! Can't wait to try this!

    I've been experimenting along a different path:

    I'm trying to get teeth and other inner mouth parts to look more natural under certain conditions - especially teeth when direct light is hitting them (or not).

    I began with SSS, but I really wanted to use a map to help control it. DCG's Light Mangler might do it, but I still haven't figured out if I can do that for animations, since it relies on being rendered first(?)....

    Anyway, there were other things about seeing teeth in great cinematography that caught my eye and attention - translucency and transparency.

    So I decided that I could forego SSS altogether and use the controls in the Transparency channel instead. I still haven't gotten as far as to experiment with the absorption and scatter, which is actually where this is all going to lead to in the end, but by copying my texture map to the Transparency channel, then cranking the map brightness down, and then copying that to translucency and lower the brightness even more, I started to see just the results I was looking for.

    That was as far as I got - ran out of time.

    The trick I'm after involves having some transparency, but very little. We can't actually see through teeth but they are definitely translucent. Translucency in Carrara allows light to pass through into what would otherwise be shadow. Adding that slight bit of transparency helps to give that visible blocing of the light if something obstructs that light in an animation - the tongue, for example.

    The silly thing is that I'm not going for realism in my animated renders. But some things just look better if they pay closer attention to reality - if that makes any sense.

    I'll try and come back with some screenies when I get the chance.

    Post edited by Dartanbeck on
  • DartanbeckDartanbeck Posts: 21,550

    Something I just grabbed that I wrote in another thread:

    At the risk of sounding like a broken record, I've really taken a liking to using my "Invisible" shader (set everything to invisible) on all eye parts except the lacrimals, then replacing the eyes using Arki's EYEdeas 3+ eyes. There is an enormous amount of really good eye maps made for M4 and V4, and EYEdeas 3+ includes remapped UV versions for both of those, plus the ones that use Arki's maps, which are also really cool.

    This is one of Rosie's eyes. The shot on the right shows how the refraction of the cornea fills the cornea with colors from the iris (instead of seeing straight through the cornea), which might look a little strange here, but looks great when placed in the living figure.

    (two quick renders of just one eye model)

    I really like having the flexibility of using these eyes. For Genesis figures, I've been using the separate Right and Left individual eyes. After setting up the character's final shape, I bring in the eyes and copy over the actual scale from the Motion tab, then parent them each to their respective eye. But I can further tweak their size if I like, which is really valuable to have. 

    As an added bonus, we can now link lights specifically to these eyes - we cannot do that on the actual figure's eyes because we cannot separate parts of a rigged figure for light linking in Carrara.

  • DartanbeckDartanbeck Posts: 21,550
    edited October 2017

    That's not a wonky mesh. Where we see the iris color going into the cornea (clear bulge part), that's the reflection/refraction going on. Still occassionally tweaking on those, but it's working the way I wanted it to for animations. It gives the more natural behavior of what happens when light passes into, past, and out of the eyes themselves.

    Cinematographers are always using light-in-the-eys to get these cool effects on the screen - and I want to too!

    Post edited by Dartanbeck on
  • MarkIsSleepyMarkIsSleepy Posts: 1,496
    edited October 2017

     

    ...

    I'm trying to get teeth and other inner mouth parts to look more natural under certain conditions - especially teeth when direct light is hitting them (or not).

    I began with SSS, but I really wanted to use a map to help control it. DCG's Light Mangler might do it, but I still haven't figured out if I can do that for animations, since it relies on being rendered first(?)....

    Anyway, there were other things about seeing teeth in great cinematography that caught my eye and attention - translucency and transparency.

    So I decided that I could forego SSS altogether and use the controls in the Transparency channel instead. I still haven't gotten as far as to experiment with the absorption and scatter, which is actually where this is all going to lead to in the end, but by copying my texture map to the Transparency channel, then cranking the map brightness down, and then copying that to translucency and lower the brightness even more, I started to see just the results I was looking for.

    That was as far as I got - ran out of time.

    The trick I'm after involves having some transparency, but very little. We can't actually see through teeth but they are definitely translucent. Translucency in Carrara allows light to pass through into what would otherwise be shadow. Adding that slight bit of transparency helps to give that visible blocing of the light if something obstructs that light in an animation - the tongue, for example.

    ...

    Yeah - teeth are really tough.

    I used SSS on the Demoncornuto's teeth (and claws and body too - I may have overdone it a bit on the body - I flip back and forth on whether I like it or not) in these two images from a while back and think it came out really well, but I used transparency on the guy's teeth in the first one (and I think that's the best skin I've ever done too - I should find that scene file on my backups and see what I did) and think that came out really well too. So both paths can work it just requires a lot of fiddling around.

    Post edited by MarkIsSleepy on
  • MarkIsSleepyMarkIsSleepy Posts: 1,496

    @Dartanbeck - those eyes look amazing. You've mentioned using them before and I remember thinking I should get them but I never did.

  • JonstarkJonstark Posts: 2,738
    MDO2010 said:

     

    Mistara said:

     

    I don't think Carrara will recognize a texture in the SSS channel. It lets you drop one in there but you loose all the subsurface options and as far as I can tell, Carrara ignores that channel if it is set to anything other that Subsurface Scattering. I think it is meant to just be a color. 

    The only way to use a map with SSS in Carrara's native renderer AFAIK is to use a multichannel mixer. Put the exact same multichannel shader in both Source 1 and Source 2 and your SSS map in the Blender. In Source 1 set the color chip for the SSS to the darkest color in the SSS map and in Source 2 set the color to the lightest color in the SSS map (I might have that reversed - if it looks weird, invert the SSS map).

    Here's an example where the only light in the scene is a strong spotlight behind the sphere, so all color on the camera side of the sphere is coming from the SSS.

     

     I have two shaders, exactly the same except for different colors in the SSS color chip, being mixed by a tiles function:

    Wow, this is a super cool trick, I'm definitely going to have to try it!

  • JonstarkJonstark Posts: 2,738

    Something I just grabbed that I wrote in another thread:

    At the risk of sounding like a broken record, I've really taken a liking to using my "Invisible" shader (set everything to invisible) on all eye parts except the lacrimals, then replacing the eyes using Arki's EYEdeas 3+ eyes. There is an enormous amount of really good eye maps made for M4 and V4, and EYEdeas 3+ includes remapped UV versions for both of those, plus the ones that use Arki's maps, which are also really cool.

    This is one of Rosie's eyes. The shot on the right shows how the refraction of the cornea fills the cornea with colors from the iris (instead of seeing straight through the cornea), which might look a little strange here, but looks great when placed in the living figure.

    (two quick renders of just one eye model)

    I really like having the flexibility of using these eyes. For Genesis figures, I've been using the separate Right and Left individual eyes. After setting up the character's final shape, I bring in the eyes and copy over the actual scale from the Motion tab, then parent them each to their respective eye. But I can further tweak their size if I like, which is really valuable to have. 

    As an added bonus, we can now link lights specifically to these eyes - we cannot do that on the actual figure's eyes because we cannot separate parts of a rigged figure for light linking in Carrara.

    I never heard of Eyedeals before, but now I'm thinking it might just be a 'must have'.  Looks like the V4/M4 version is on sale at the moment, so it might be an 'ideal' time to pick it up :)

  • JonstarkJonstark Posts: 2,738
    I used SSS on the Demoncornuto's teeth (and claws and body too - I may have overdone it a bit on the body - I flip back and forth on whether I like it or not) in these two images from a while back and think it came out really well, but I used transparency on the guy's teeth in the first one (and I think that's the best skin I've ever done too - I should find that scene file on my backups and see what I did) and think that came out really well too. So both paths can work it just requires a lot of fiddling around.
    MDO2010 said:

     

    That really is a tremendous image.   

  • DartanbeckDartanbeck Posts: 21,550
    Jonstark said:

    Something I just grabbed that I wrote in another thread:

    At the risk of sounding like a broken record, I've really taken a liking to using my "Invisible" shader (set everything to invisible) on all eye parts except the lacrimals, then replacing the eyes using Arki's EYEdeas 3+ eyes. There is an enormous amount of really good eye maps made for M4 and V4, and EYEdeas 3+ includes remapped UV versions for both of those, plus the ones that use Arki's maps, which are also really cool.

    This is one of Rosie's eyes. The shot on the right shows how the refraction of the cornea fills the cornea with colors from the iris (instead of seeing straight through the cornea), which might look a little strange here, but looks great when placed in the living figure.

    (two quick renders of just one eye model)

    I really like having the flexibility of using these eyes. For Genesis figures, I've been using the separate Right and Left individual eyes. After setting up the character's final shape, I bring in the eyes and copy over the actual scale from the Motion tab, then parent them each to their respective eye. But I can further tweak their size if I like, which is really valuable to have. 

    As an added bonus, we can now link lights specifically to these eyes - we cannot do that on the actual figure's eyes because we cannot separate parts of a rigged figure for light linking in Carrara.

    I never heard of Eyedeals before, but now I'm thinking it might just be a 'must have'.  Looks like the V4/M4 version is on sale at the moment, so it might be an 'ideal' time to pick it up :)

    They've only been made for M4/V4. But EYEdeas 3+ for Victoria 4 and Michael 4 is a really special product in many ways. 

    Again, not trying to be a salesperson for this.

    For Gen 4 figures, the conforming figure set of eyes is incredible. They follow whatever morphs and/or pose dials we might use as well as being a separate figure for light linking besides all of the shader bliss we get for them being modeled the way they are.

    No matter what model or figure we're using, however, there are individual figure eyes as well, available both in Arki's own UV mapping or Gen 4 eye texture mapping, so we can choose between the huge assortment included with the product and those we might already have in our Gen 4 texture collections. What's cool about that is that Arki has some really cool expansion textures using her own mapping, and Gen 4 eye maps are very easy to find on sale or whatever. It's also easy to see (in a photo editor) how we could use any eye maps to make our own to use either mapping solution - so there's that too.

    For Genesis, I've used the individual figure EYEdeas

    First I setup the character's final shape, then use the motion tab to copy the scale of the original Genesis eye (I click the size number, then hit Enter to make sure the entire (non-rounded) value gets selected (not just what's visible in the box)) and paste that value into the new EYEdeas, then use Align to place them where they should go.

    Once that's all done, I simly drag them into the Genesis Actor, onto the appropriate eye, to parent them... Done

    The only thing here is that they won't 'follow' any shaping morphs, but they will follow pose controls for the eyes. So if I end up changing the character's shape to where the eyes might be effected, I simply unparent them first, then scale and align them again as above. It might sound like a process, but it really isn't - and I find it totally worth it!

    They do take a little getting used to - they actually have a lens, inner eye mapping, individual morphs... I love 'em!!!

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