Fresnel in Vray for Maya
I have a quick question about the two (that I know of) different ways to achieve fresnel in Maya/Vray.
First way, which I'm familiar with from 3ds Max and Vrya, is simply checking the fresnel box in the Vray Material properties.
The Second, which I just picked up in Maya, is to create a sampler Utility node, work with the facing ratio, linked the the U and V coordinates of a gradient ramp, then modify the gradient ramp to your liking and apply that gradient ramp into the reflective slot of the Vray Material.
So which one tickles your fancy and why? On one hand, there is more control with the second method. On the other hand, if vRay materials are supposed to by physically accurate and you are trying to achieve physically accurate materials in your render, wouldn't you be better of just checking the Use Fresnel box right in the Vray material?
Right now I'm thinking the second method is superior for ultimate control. If you want your reflections to behave slighting exaggerated to pop your renders more you'd have the control to do so.
Just trying to figure out the logic behind both and which one I'd be better off using.
Cheers,
9k
First way, which I'm familiar with from 3ds Max and Vrya, is simply checking the fresnel box in the Vray Material properties.
The Second, which I just picked up in Maya, is to create a sampler Utility node, work with the facing ratio, linked the the U and V coordinates of a gradient ramp, then modify the gradient ramp to your liking and apply that gradient ramp into the reflective slot of the Vray Material.
So which one tickles your fancy and why? On one hand, there is more control with the second method. On the other hand, if vRay materials are supposed to by physically accurate and you are trying to achieve physically accurate materials in your render, wouldn't you be better of just checking the Use Fresnel box right in the Vray material?
Right now I'm thinking the second method is superior for ultimate control. If you want your reflections to behave slighting exaggerated to pop your renders more you'd have the control to do so.
Just trying to figure out the logic behind both and which one I'd be better off using.
Cheers,
9k
Replies
What you want to do is get your fresnel curves from this website, its got most of your materials on it.
http://refractiveindex.info
first pick your material, lets say this aluminum
http://refractiveindex.info/?shelf=main&book=Ag&page=Rakic
and enter a wave length of 0.55 (Can't remember the reasoning behind it) then if you scroll down to the last graph. you want to copy the green non-polarized curve into your 3d software. once your finished you have a near perfect fresnel curve that you can tweak later for more artistic control.
it's all explained in this video by the way. I'm on this course, its seriously awesome
http://vimeo.com/94813625
I've even got a simplified version of it in my game engine at work :P Looks awesome in game to
Cheers!
More game like seeing as it would be a real-time shader solution.
Also, Vray Fresnel Node looks tight in Maya. There are so many different ways to go about doing the (sort of) same thing.
Lmao smooth
I'd rather not be restricted in anything if that means going through a step or two more. I do agree with you, but that's also how I view it.
Either way, digging the node editor over 3ds compact material editor. Nicely executed.
tadpole3150> ? Not following. Was a serious suggestion on my part given I thought it was for a game related project.
Oh yea totally it's a wicked shader, it's just funny the way your advertising it
Cheers guys.
http://www.thegnomonworkshop.com/store/product/1102/#.VG5KmfnF-So
What would be nice is if you could use the same File-nodes for textures for ShaderFX as you can with other hypershader shaders. That way you could build your offline shader and create a real-time shader with similar look for previz purposes in the viewport. Both being fed from the same texture inputs. Shouldn't be too hard to script support to work around this though.
By the way, Game Design in the games industry is used for the work of designing how a game should work/play and not for visuals
I can see though where this would be very powerful to concept ideas out before pushing them to game engines or what-not. I don't know much about it.
I've been trying to do something similar to that. Using 3ds max and vray we built these little scenes, made textures, materials and lighting all inside vray so by the end we had this little render scene all set up and looking lovely. We could show these renders to producers and get them signed off before we had to bake a single thing, or even bother a coder. It's real time saver
Once were all happy with it we baked the lighting and copied the textures into our game engine. Using physically based materials you can just copy your vray material settings directly into the game and get results that look just like your offline render. We've even added this custom fresnel curve that 9krausec's talking about in game
The best part about it is now you have this render scene for marketing material and a realtime scene that looks photo realistic.
it's like a backwards version of what your talking about :P
At my job (bringing Vray and Maya on board), I'll be developing a library of textures that will be pulled and used in multiple projects (we do product rendering, animation for fitness equipment).
I think it'd be worth taking some extra time to develop a material library with ShaderFX integrated into it. Might as well build something really well once if it's going to be use again and again in production.