Matertial Question

amethystpendant

Hi,

I'm trying to create a material to use as a sequin, I looked at the cellular texture but I can't work out how to get a regular pattern of circles, any help appreciated!

amethystpendant

Really should have said, for superfly!

anomalaus

@amethystpendant I used Tile nodes in ellipsoid, rather than rectangular shape mode. with a bit of node math, you can apply a half offset to each row of circular tiles, which give a hexagonal layout. A second, similar Tile node, but with a larger value for the mortar thickness, makes a central hole. Blending or subtracting one from the other gives a small, central hole, to represent the stitching of each sequin.
0_1549710394909_Screen Shot 2019-02-09 at 10.06.03 pm.png
Bump up the density to match the number of sequins you want around the circumference of your clothing (Mine was reduced from 144 to 12 for visibility in this screenshot, so you can see the alternating rows).
I adjusted the tile width due to the vagaries of the material I was applying the sequins to.
I also apply this shader:
0_1549710616176_Screen Shot 2019-02-09 at 10.09.39 pm.png for various pearlescence specular effects. On white, it looks like pearl, on black, like oil.

amethystpendant

@anomalaus That is exactly what I needed, thank you so much! Off to play now :)

anomalaus

@amethystpendant you're most welcome.
Here's their effect in a render:
0_1549715344772_Aki Lounging Iridescent Swimsuit.jpg

amethystpendant

@anomalaus said in Matertial Question:

@amethystpendant you're most welcome.
Here's their effect in a render:

That's beautiful, would you mind showing the whole of the shader as I didn't know what to do with the hsv node :(

bagginsbill

I made a sequin shader long ago - it's on my site. I didn't think about the hole in the middle of each one. But I did make it so that the sequins could be random colors from a palette of 4 of your choice, and that they are in semi-random positions, instead of a regular grid.

It's not so great for closeups but it does work OK for some scenes.

It's here if you want to play:
https://sites.google.com/site/bagginsbill/free-stuff/sequins

With just two small changes, you can make it work just fine in SF. Here's a render in SF.

To make it work in SF, do this:

Set the shader gamma to 1
0_1549724620825_065bfc10-bc32-4b80-81d5-cf482c8f2461-image.png
Disconnect the Color_Pow that is doing the final gamma (which is illegal in SF) and connect to its source like this:

0_1549724680495_e97f8486-4467-4110-97a1-7bc4381aaa26-image.png

bagginsbill

To make the sequins concave, increase the Bump on the Poser Surface node.

amethystpendant

@bagginsbill said in Matertial Question:

To make the sequins concave, increase the Bump on the Poser Surface node.

Thanks, I did try yours, but didn't know how to get it to work in SF, now I do :)

anomalaus

@amethystpendant here's the full shader:
0_1549801566642_Screen Shot 2019-02-10 at 11.08.17 pm.png
and the Compound Metal shader (which I think owes attribution to @bagginsbill , perhaps?):
0_1549801597994_Screen Shot 2019-02-10 at 11.09.02 pm.png
So the shader is fully metallic/specular, hence the black Diffuse_Color. The connections to PoserSurface:Specular_Color are just for SreeD preview purposes.

Clothing figure is the same SwimSuit for V4 by Mada/FaeryDreams, but with different transparency/hem maps of my own devising.

If you want more subtle iridescence effects, like mother-of-pearl, knock back the saturation in the Reflection_hsv node to, say, 20% (0.2) and set the Diffuse_Color to white.

IIRC, iridescence derives from multilayered materials acting like a diffraction grating and reflecting different wavelengths at different angles. The high multiplicative factor in the Hue channel of the HSV node simulates this when fed by the Fresnel_Blend node. Play with any of the parameters and see what effects this has. You might be able to get results which stably show different predominant colours than the blue-green this shader does.

amethystpendant

@anomalaus That is wonderful, thank you. I don't suppose you could let me have the MT5 file as I'm bound to mess up some of the plumbing. If I had that I could add it as a material applicable from an EZSkin3 pluggin. I don't need the actual trans maps.

anomalaus

@amethystpendant here's the MT5 Iridescent Sequins HiCut Hem.mt5
I've cut out all the personal folder identifiers, so they're just generic file paths. Trans and bump maps are not included.

amethystpendant

@anomalaus said in Matertial Question:

@amethystpendant here's the MT5 Iridescent Sequins HiCut Hem.mt5
I've cut out all the personal folder identifiers, so they're just generic file paths. Trans and bump maps are not included.

Thank you so much, as soon as I have my hair shader plugin out (hopefully today!) I'll start having a look at this :)

amethystpendant

@anomalaus Thanks for this, I was quite right, I would have totally screwed up the plumbing :)

I've now extracted the shader part from both the Suit and the sequins and am playing around with the settings, colour, ior etc to get a better understanding of what is doing what, or at least the effect, as I'm unlikely to get the maths behind it all!