Dictionary Help Please
laststand6522732
Posts: 866
Hi People,
Terms and definitions are key in learning. I'm stumbling over some. Please tell me the difference between:
1.) A Surface
2.) A Texture
3.) A Material
Thanks in advance.
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Comments
a surface is the surface of the geometry, the mesh/model
a texture usually means a texture map applied to the surface of the mesh in the format of jpeg/tiff,png
a material could include the above and also include procedural based shaders.
Thank you. Please excuse me if that leads to more questions.
The Surfaces tab settings don't seem to have much to do with the mesh itself. What am I missing here? I am thinking mesh refers to the polygons themselves, like unto a net. Am I wrong about this?
So Texture is a reference to a UV Map? I can grasp that.
Shaders...slowly I turned...I forgot to ask how Shaders figure in...What is a Shader?
Ok when making a mesh/model one tends to set up Material Zones according to the uvmap if it has one generated. Many models in the DAZ3D are uvmapped, many freebies aren't but there are also many with. So the mesh has Material/Surface Zones hence the Surfaces Pane.
Yes the texture maps use the uv map/s as a guide to the texture maps correspond with the surface zones of the mesh.
In many CGI programs you can make computer generated surfaces/materials without the need for texture maps. Texture maps are the biggest drain of computer memory so making the procedural saves a lot of memory. These are generally defined as Shaders but some use the term for texture map based materials too.
This makes more sense. I need to let it sink in. I'm going to leave this browser tab open for a day or so, and stare at your answer. I am only beginning to sniff around modeling, so I haven't made all the connections yet.
Thanks.
I'll be back.
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For they calleth not a spade a spade, but here a digger, and there a delver, and elsewhere an entrenching tool. ~ Anon.
you might find this 'what is a shader?' thread in the new users forum of interest too:
http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/41520/
Thanks. At first glance, it will take me a while to reconcile that thread with what I just learned from Szark. I'd better digest this thread first.
A comprehensive glossary of terms, for me, would be a great thing. Without it, help from the people in this forum is invaluable.
Thanks.
There is a glossary of terms stickied over the New Users Help Forum at http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/46/ .
I wonder if it would help (or just make things harder) to try applying the knowledge in practice to see it in action. For example, find some super-simple object and look at it's texture map, replace that texture map with some random image and see the effect and why that won't work, maybe use DS's tools to select one or two polygons on the object's surface and make them a different material, apply a procedural shader to it instead of using the supplied texture map and see what happens, etc.
Thank you Sean. I've never seen that glossary before. It's not perfect - there's no entry for Surfaces, for example - but it's the best thing I've found. A load of effort went into that. It will be useful.
Yes, of course! We learn by doing. I learn best by defining a goal, then learning how to do it. But when the fish don't jump in the boat for me, and YouTube videos don't do the job, and my wheels are spinning, I look for the docs. I've spent time learning to create, modify and put clothes on figures, etc. Now that I have come to rendering, I need a better understanding of surfaces. I'm past push all the buttons and see what happens, and saying "What the..." isn't helping me either. So, I've come here. I've studied a number of programs in the past year or so, and this is by far the friendliest and most helpful forum around.
I plan to animate these characters. I plan to make my own props, cloths, buildings, etc. I have far to go, and I am not always patient with myself. A few weeks back I had to make friends with the content library. Now, it's time for surfaces.
Thanks for your help.
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Something else that might help you visualise what's which.
Load an object; a Genesis (or Genesis2) figure is ideal, although it can be pretty much anything.
Select the Surfaces tab, and select the Surfaces Selection Tool (up on the toolbar, it looks like a triple blob with a little arrowhead above it).
Hover the mouse over various parts of the model you loaded; parts of it will be highlighted in orange, and if you pause the mouse you'll see a little grey tooltip pop up. This is the name of the Surface the mouse is pointing at, if you click on it the surface's parameters will appear in the Surfaces tab. You'll also see the orange highlight change to an orange outline around the Surface.
If you look carefully at the parameters, you'll see a lot of them have a down-pointing-arrow button at the left side. Some of these buttons will look different, as if there's something behind the arrow. Hover the mouse over one of them, and you'll see a thumbnail of the texture applied to that parameter; this is just a picture file, although it can do more than just apply a coloured picture to the object. Different parameters apply different effects to the surface. Click on the button, and you'll get a list of all the textures applied to all the objects currently in your scene, and a "Browse..." option to let you select other textures. Don't bother with this just yet, it can get complicated.
Surface
A set of polygons on the model which all share the SAME material settings. These are usually contiguous, but not always. You can use the surface selection tool to highlight and select individual surfaces to see how things are put together.
Texture
A simple 2D image. These are mapped to the polygons in a variety of ways, but the most basic use is for the colour channel known as 'diffuse color' which changes the color of the surface. Other channels include bump for adding the illusion of depth and specular for the shine of an object.
Material
A material is a combination of settings which tell the render engine how to display your surface. Often this will include textures, and perhaps bumps or displacements too. In this instance the term 'material' is fairly synonymous with the term 'shader' and refers to everything which describes how a surface should react to light, perhaps even telling the surface to emit its own.
There's a lot to digest for newcomers to 3D, but luckily it's a bit of a snowball effect. Once you learn the foundations, the rest becomes a lot easier to master, and each new skill just gives you that much more to work with nex time.
It's too late SpottedKitty, I've been there, and I've experimented with it a bit.
I can see the need to give me access to the image map file, and to swap in a different file if I want to. I've tried selecting none for the pupil and iris, then making them both glossy black using the other parameters. I've not been satisfied with the results. I may go into detail about this here in the future. It's one of the reasons I want a greater understanding of surfaces. Right now, there are just too many unknown variables for me to even ask an intelligent question.
It's not clear to me what the benefit is of showing me every image map in the scene. Pants, in an eye? Kinda humorous, actually. :-) I do understand the list has to appear somewhere.
Thanks.
Maybe this is a good place to start. Can you post a screenshot of your result, and (if not immediately obvious) why you weren't satisfied, and/or a screenshot/link of what you were trying to accomplish if you have a reference image you were aiming for? Perhaps we can identify what should be changed or what's happening.
For your list of surfaces showing pants, I wonder if that's an option that you can enable/disable. I picked a random clothing item and I'm seeing one category for the figure that can be expanded into all the figure's surfaces, then another category for the clothing that can be expanded to show all the clothing's surfaces, which definitely makes it easier to figure out what's what than all at once as you are seeing. I've never really looked closely at that so I'm not sure why I see something different than you are seeing.
However, there may be times when you would want to see surfaces that seem unrelated. For example if you have two figures in the scene with different eye textures and you wanted to copy one figure's eye texture onto the other, you would want to be able to see and choose from surfaces from both figures. Or if you had a figure and a stone building, you might want to change the figure's texture to use that of the stone building to create a matching stone statue. (Of course this would usually not work since the human figure and building have different UV mappings and applying the building texture to the figure would be horribly distorted, however I have been able to pull a stunt like that with limited success every so often when I get lucky.) A more likely scenario would be a building and another rectangular object as both might have a very basic box-like rectangular map and a solid image texture with no detail.
Very good shot, HeraldOfFire! The conciseness of these definitions is admirable. Brevity is merciful. :-) The way you tied surfaces and materials together is not lost on me either. Bravo! Less is more!
Image maps/UV maps are the easiest for me to comprehend. We have all seen the map of the Earth, displayed as a sphere sliced up and spread flat. The other two definitions play well together, as you have written them. My understanding has grown a lot in a short time in this thread. This rounds out part one of my three part Surfaces and Rendering lesson. I suspect it was the easy part.
Yes. I have many years experience in Corel, and thousands of hours of CAD time, and they are nothing at all compared to the complexity of 3D. I'm trying to think of this as college. Every day you study more than subject, and some subjects take more than a year. I will say I can do things in an hour or two now that, a year ago, took me a week.
Thanks.
Maybe this is a good place to start. Can you post a screenshot of your result, and (if not immediately obvious) why you weren't satisfied, and/or a screenshot/link of what you were trying to accomplish if you have a reference image you were aiming for? Perhaps we can identify what should be changed or what's happening.
For your list of surfaces showing pants, I wonder if that's an option that you can enable/disable. I picked a random clothing item and I'm seeing one category for the figure that can be expanded into all the figure's surfaces, then another category for the clothing that can be expanded to show all the clothing's surfaces, which definitely makes it easier to figure out what's what than all at once as you are seeing. I've never really looked closely at that so I'm not sure why I see something different than you are seeing.
However, there may be times when you would want to see surfaces that seem unrelated. For example if you have two figures in the scene with different eye textures and you wanted to copy one figure's eye texture onto the other, you would want to be able to see and choose from surfaces from both figures. Or if you had a figure and a stone building, you might want to change the figure's texture to use that of the stone building to create a matching stone statue. (Of course this would usually not work since the human figure and building have different UV mappings and applying the building texture to the figure would be horribly distorted, however I have been able to pull a stunt like that with limited success every so often when I get lucky.) A more likely scenario would be a building and another rectangular object as both might have a very basic box-like rectangular map and a solid image texture with no detail.
I appreciate your encouragement, Sean, but I'm afraid to let the car go off the side of the road. I believe in doing my homework before raising my hand to ask questions. The answers to my first major questions came faster and easier than I expected. In the second part, I need to learn the meanings of those mind-boggling terms we use for surface properties. Maybe by then, I'll have answered my own question. If not, I will look for you.
It would be cool if there was a concise/verbose switch for the image map list dropdown. Maybe there is, I don't know. If I find one, I will share. I'm W7-64, DS 4.6.3-64. It's OK with me to see all those files in the list. That should be the most difficult thing I have to learn, looking at that list.
Next I need to have a look at those surface property names. I need to be able to compose my questions. I have a couple of references to look at first.
Thanks.
Material: A UV zone on any UV mapped item. This Material zone can be used to Map a texture to only that section of the mapped mesh, this is done with a UV map of all Material zones called a texture template and creates a Texture Map.
The Material zone can also be selected as a single area and a Shader applied to just this one Material UV zone, replacing any texture already in use. The Material zones can also be used to fully texture a item with only Shaders if the user wishes to do so.
Any Texture map or Shader in a Material Zone is the Render Material that will be used at Render time, be it a bit map Texture or procedural Shader.
None UV mapped Single Mesh items only have One Material Zone and often can not be Texture Mapped as they have no Template Zones, but can use any Shaders.
I can't believe it, but I nearly understand that. The Texture Template is new to me, but if I understand what it is correctly, there obviously must be one. Let's see if I actually understand it, by looking at my interpretation of it. Let's say I have a figure. I have an image map for the head, another for the arm, another for the torso, etc. Each one is associated with a unique Material Zone, that is, a predefined group of polygons. I may have a Material Zone with no image, just a shader - a chrome eyeball, for example. My Texture Template is a list of those Material Zones, and what Material is to be used in each one. Yes? The Texture Template allows me to have a Surfaces property called "skin" that I can use to turn them all green with one setting, if I wish. Am I on the scent?
While you were writing, I asked myself, what's a bump map? So I read this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bump_mapping
This led me to wonder, what's a displacement map? So I read this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Displacement_mapping
and soon I read about procedural maps - maps with no maps! Egad! There were other types of maps, too. I'm not going to go there now. Maybe in the future, but not now. I can hear my art teacher saying "Broad brush! Broad brush!"
I am beginning to get the idea that the definitions of certain 3D CG terms can be contextual, and that sometimes more than one set of terms can be used to express the same concept. It's good for me to understand this, because I can be pedantic.
Thanks. More later.
A texture template is nothing more than an image texture. However it is not designed to be used. Instead, it is designed as a rough guide to show which parts of the image correspond to which parts of the actual object. You would paint over the top of it to create your own texture, or you would use it as a layer behind a texture you are creating or modifying. You don't need it, but it is helpful in the process of creating or modifying a real texture that you will actually use.
Here are some thumbnail examples for texture templates for Victoria 3.
EDITED TO ADD: with newer products, the texture templates are included as another file you can download. With older products, those texture template files are found under a tab on the product page. Some don't have any. Some people create their own and make them available to help you, Snowsultan made a bunch for example ("seam guides").
Were you got off track is thinking its a List. The UV map is as you say a group of Polygons selected on the Mesh, this is done in a 3D modeling program that creates UV maps and creates Mesh such as Hexagon or Blender, or in a program that loads a Mesh item but only creates UV maps such as UVMapper. The UV Map once created becomes embedded in the Mesh as a permanent map of each of these groups. That Map is then used to create a Texture template, the template is then used to make the Texture file in colors or grey shades to make Skin textures and even Bump Maps and others. They are all created from the UV map (texture template) so they match the same parts everytime. All of the different Zones added together would be the Full Skin of the mesh. So a skin can be many different Material Zones, it depends on what is in the zones as to what will render. Once created a UV map is permanent, all the zones fixed. Items can have more than one UV map, just as Genesis does, that allows Genesis to use V4 UV's or M4's or V5's or the UV you pick from the list. Each one is a different Map with different parts of the Mesh selected in the Zones.
Seems somewhat misleading, if you don't mind me saying so. The UV zone in itself is not a material, but the area where the material will be applied. The UV's just tell Daz Studio how the material will be positioned in that area, and often times they will also be used for procedural shaders as well.
After all, you can have two otherwise identical surfaces on an object both with different materials. A good way of looking at is is that the surface is the canvas, the material is the paint.
The usual terms are Material Zone (Poser) or Surface (DS). Material alone is the collection of settings, including the shader to use. Though modo does call Surfaces/Material Zones Materials.
Aha! Templates! Thanks for the pics, Sean. I've come across these while rooting through my Content dir. I've only seen them for clothing, and I've never seen them with color. I assumed their purpose was as you described. They are similar to dressmakers' patterns, or what sheet metal fabricators call "flat pattern layout." I have plans to use these templates in the future.
This is what I meant by contextual definitions. What do we call this shape? It depends. UV Zone/UV Map, Image Map, Template, Material Zone, depending on our context. At one point the term UV threw me off. Ultraviolet what? English in general suffers from an excess of acronyms. Then I read this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UV_mapping
It was an eye opener for me. Is an RPG a Rocket Propelled Grenade, or a Role Playing Game? It depends on the context.
Thank you Richard. I spent a little time with Poser last year, and I am somewhat acquainted with the Material Room. Each program seems to share a common language, but have its own dialect. (I suspect the evil hand of Marketing, but that's a different thread.) I'm focusing on DS terminology right now, but I'm wondering what I'll find in LuxRender, not to mention Hexagon (Validate?). After I establish a semi-firm base in DS, I'll have something to build on.
Thanks, All.
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"You may think at first I'm as mad as a hatter when I tell you, a cat must have THREE DIFFERENT NAMES." ~ T.S.Elliot
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sax6J8n1AiE
Seems somewhat misleading, if you don't mind me saying so. The UV zone in itself is not a material, but the area where the material will be applied. The UV's just tell Daz Studio how the material will be positioned in that area, and often times they will also be used for procedural shaders as well.
After all, you can have two otherwise identical surfaces on an object both with different materials. A good way of looking at is is that the surface is the canvas, the material is the paint.If you read the entire post I do clearly state the Material Zone is either a Texture Or Shader and that Is the Render Material at render so it covers Both file types. Bit map or Shader. Only the Render Material maters at render time. And each zone can have ether or in them so a mix of Shaders and texture map is possible, some software even allows a mixture of more than one texture map in the Material Zones. The finished render of a material zone is a compiled image of all input to the one Material zone as sent to the render engine. Often a combination of a type Shader, DAZ Studio Default is a style shader as is AoA's SSS Shader, a texture map, bit map color image often including sub maps such as Bump, Spec, Reflec and or others, or a Content Shader, Frabricator fabric shaders are an example of a content Shader as would be the SuperSuit shaders. The finished Combination in the Material Zone as sent to the Programs Render engine is the Render Material. Only a Render creates the finished compiled image on the mapped surface. At no time is the mesh actually painted, it is all virtual on or in the Material Zones. The actual Mesh item with or without a UV map is not actually changed in the Texturing process.
In Hexagon, a Material Zone is called a Shading Domain, but that's not important right now. :lol:
As Mr Haseltine alludes to the problem you are running in to is different 3D programs will use the terms surface and material to mean the same thing. Almost all 3D modeling programs assign a default surface/material to a mesh as soon as it is created. In the modeler you can assign new surfaces/materials to specific polygons. Furthermore surfaces/materials can either be UV mapped or not.
Might I suggest you try the free modeling program Wings3D. I feel you can get a better since of how this all works by actually building even a simply model.
http://www.wings3d.com/
Thank you Jaderail. For the moment, I think I've got this one. We each use different words to describe a thing, people like me look for the common denominator. Your help is appreciated.
In Hexagon, a Material Zone is called a Shading Domain, but that's not important right now. :lol:
That's funny all right! :-)
I know you're right, jestmart. In fact, I got into the terminology jungle by starting out to study Hexagon. I Installed the program. I started watching Vladimir Chopine's videos. Then, along the way, I happened to test the DS rendering pane. Aw, no. All this work, and my render looks like junk. I decided to stop in my tracks and get to the bottom of this. That's where I am now. I understand that, after I get some knowledge of modeling, the puzzle pieces will begin to fit together. But if I get involved in modeling now, I'll only put off rendering until later.
This whole subject, 3D CG, is strewn with beckoning rabbit holes. I'm using all the will I have to stay on the path, and I still end up going down some of the holes. I don't need to become a lexicographer, I just need to find out why black eyes don't shine and red skin turns white. I realize there are a number of factors involved. I have chosen to attack my biggest mystery first. If I don't know the language, I'll never understand the answers.
I'll take a look at Wings. At this point I'm OK with Hexagon, I don't have any of the stability issues people report, not yet anyway. But I don't know so much that I can't look at an alternative. Thanks for the suggestion.
ok what don't you get as it stands now with the questions you asked? I can get it down to basics for you if you want.
I'm good Szark, thanks. I asked for three definitions, and I got them - in depth, and in a way that makes sense to me. I've forgotten what it was not to know.
Now, I'm looking at that list of terms that represent values in the Surfaces pane. I'm doing something wrong in there, because I don't understand what all these things mean. There's a pot full o' terms, and I hardly know where to begin. I suppose I have two options.
One would be to list all those terms, take a shot at some definitions, post it here, and ask everyone to throw rocks at it. Zzzz....
The other option would be to take a more focused approach by asking for help with the two very specific issues I'm having trouble with - shiny black eyes and red skin - and learn to correct those.
The second way looks like more fun, and probably would be more productive in less time. I would learn some of the terms, without making drudge work out of it.
I can almost see the answer as I read my own writing. What do you suggest?