Where to plug the Glossiness map in Mental Ray using Softimage.
polycounter lvl 6
I can't seam to find any info on this.
The only glossiness I can find is under reflections.
Thanks folks.
The only glossiness I can find is under reflections.
Thanks folks.
Replies
But yeah, as Ark said, which one?
I am trying to make my metal textures look better.
I was using a phong but I read recently read a Blinn is better served for metal due to the extra specular parameters. I have been testing that.
What shader do you recommend for metal? Any tips or tricks.
Laku:
For a good metal material would I not use a separate map for Spec, gloss AND reflections?
What I mean by this is your final presentation. Is it going to be in an engine or offline renderer? Creating textures for material definition in one engine/shader will yield different results in another engine/shader. I know I am generalizing the terms engine and shader, but every software package translates the shader differently. Using the 3PS shader will still yield different results than a Xoliul shader. Using a standard shader for a scanline render will be much different than using a shader for an iray or mentalray render.
So you need to make a decision of what is going to be your final output. If you have already decided that, then that is awesome.
The next step is to perform tests so you can see how each channel of the shader uses the information from the texture to control your material definition. Quite honestly, it is trial and error until you understand what kind of texture input variations you need for that shader to yield the results you want. Once you know how the shader performs different tasks, then you can finalize your specific maps.
So in Max, on a basic blinn, it is quite simple... spec goes into spec, gloss goes into gloss. A 3PS shader will control reflection based on an env map that you plug directly into the shader and can be masked (in an alpha channel I believe) to control intensity of the reflection and make the material pop even more. Building your materials and textures around a 3PS shader will not translate directly over to another shader/engine, e.g. 3PS -> Source Engine = not the same results. So build everything in your final output, or if you are in an enironment that has a 3rd party shader in-line with an engine's output, e.g. 3PS's work on Brink.
I am not sure how much help that may be, but knowing what you want your final output to look like, understanding the functionality of different shaders available, and discovering how much control you can have within your textures are all things that take nothing more than practice and experience.
The best way I have found to define gloss is to use no spec map initially. Set it to a solid color of white and create grayscale variations to define the glossiness of different definitions. Then go back and add in a spec to define intensity and color variation. Keep moving back and forth between the two to further progress the development of each texture. Also, in general terms of using shaders, do not be afraid to use more than one shader. There is no rule that says you have to have only one shader over the entire model. This requires some pre-planning of how you build your lowpoly, but the fewer shaders used will use less resources in the end. It's not a fantastic practice to use, because you can start bogging shit down with additional shader resources for rendering, but the tech is always progressing. In the end, 'make pretty' first and scale back if necessary. Similar to working your textures on a large scale and then taking them down in size if/when necessary.
Just my 2dollas.