Chaos Group - Material
Chaos Group - Material
Chaos Group - Material
Page Contents
Overview
Diffuse
Example: The Roughness Parameter
Reflection
Anisotropy
Dim Distance
Example: The Reflection Color Parameter
Example: The Reflection Glossiness Parameter
Example: The Fresnel Option
Refraction
Dispersion
Translucency
Example: The Refraction Color Parameter
Example: The Fog Color Parameter
Example: The Fog Multiplier Parameter
Example: The Refraction IOR Parameter
Example: The Refraction Glossiness Parameter
Example: The Refraction Depth Parameter
Example: Dispersion
Example: BRDF Type
Example: GTR Tail Falloff
Example: The Anisotropy Parameter
Example: The Rotation Parameter
Opacity
Advanced Options
Multipliers
Material Options
Maps
Bump/Normal Mapping
Advanced Options
Displacement
Environment Overrides
Background Environment
Reflection Environment
Refraction Environment
Binding
Notes
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Overview
Diffuse
Diffuse – The diffuse color of the material. Note the actual diffuse color of the surface also depends on the reflection
and refraction colors. See the Energy preservation parameter below.
Roughness – Used to simulate rough surfaces or surfaces covered with dust (for example, skin, or the surface of the
Moon). For more information, please see the Roughness Parameter example below.
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Reflection
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Reflection Color – Specifies the reflection color. Note that the reflection color dims the diffuse surface color based on
the Energy preservation option. For more information, please see the Reflection Color Parameter example below.
Highlight Glossiness – Enables a separate glossiness control for the specular highlights of the material. Enabling this
option and setting the value to 1.0 disables the specular highlights.
Reflection Glossiness – Specifies the sharpness of reflections. A value of 1.0 means perfect mirror-like reflection;
lower values produce blurry or glossy reflections. Use the Subdivs parameter below to control the quality of glossy
reflections. For more information, please see the Reflection Glossiness Parameter example below.
Fresnel – When enabled, the reflection strength depends on the viewing angle of the surface. Some materials in nature
(e.g. glass, etc.) reflect light in this manner. Note that the Fresnel effect depends on the index of refraction as well. For
more information, please see the Fresnel Option example below.
Reflection IOR – When disabled, the Refraction IOR is used as Reflection IOR. Enable for finer control over the
Reflection IOR.
BRDF – Determines the type of BRDF (the shape of the highlight). The use of GGX model is recommended for metals
and other highly reflective materials. For more information, please see the BRDF Type example below.
Phong
Blinn
Ward
Microfacet GTR (GGX)
Back Side Reflect – When disabled, reflections are calculated for the front side of the objects only. When enabled
back-side reflections will also be calculated.
Max depth – Specifies the number of times a ray can be reflected. Scenes with lots of reflective and refractive surfaces
may require higher values to look right.
Affect Channels – Specify which channels will be affected by the reflectivity of the material.
Color Only – The reflectivity of the material will affect only the RGB channel of the final render
Color+alpha – Causes the material to transmit the alpha of the reflected objects instead of displaying an opaque
alpha.
All channels – The reflectivity of the material will affect all channels and render elements.
GTR Tail Falloff – Active only when the BRDF is set to GGX. It allows fine tuning of the specular reflections by
controlling the rate at which the sharp specular highlight fades out. Higher values create a value spread out the fade out
of the highlight. This parameter does not affect the size of the actual highlight - this is controlled by the Reflect
glossiness paramater. For more information, please see the GTR tail falloff example below.
Anisotropy
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Anisotropy (-1 to 1) – Determines the shape of the highlight. A value of 0.0 means isotropic highlights. Negative and
positive values simulate brushed surfaces. For more information, please see the Anisotropy example below.
Rotation – Determines the orientations of the anisotropic effect in a float value between 0 and 1 (where 0 is 0 degrees
and 1 is 360 degrees). For more information, see the Rotation example below.
Local Axis – The orientation of the anisotropic reflection/highlight is based on the object's local X, Y or Z axis.
UVW – When enabled, the orientation of the anisotropic reflection/highlight is based on the specified map
channel/set.
Local Axis – Specifies a local axis used for Anisotropy orientation. (X, Y, Z)
Map Channel/Set – Specifies a map channel that is used for the anisotropic reflections/highlights orientation.
Dim Distance
Distance – Specifies a distance after which the reflection rays will not be traced.
Dim Falloff – Sets a fall off radius for the dim distance.
This example demonstrates how the Reflection color parameter controls the reflectivity of the material. Note that this
color also acts as a filter for the diffuse color (e.g. stronger reflections dim the diffuse component).
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Reflection color = Black. Reflection color = Medium Gray. Reflection color = White.
(0, 0, 0) (128, 128, 128) (255, 255, 255)
This example demonstrates the effect of the Fresnel option. Note how the strength of the reflection varies with the IOR
of the material. For this example, the Reflection color is pure white (255, 255, 255).
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Refraction
Refraction Color – Specifies the refraction color. Note that the actual refraction color depends on the reflection color as
well. See the Energy preservation parameter below. For more information about refraction color, please see the
Refraction Color Parameter example below.
Fog color – Specifies the attenuation of light as it passes through the material. This option allows to simulate the fact
that thick objects look less transparent than thin objects. Note that the effect of the fog color depends on the absolute
size of the objects and is therefore scene-dependent unless the Fog system units scaling is enabled. The fog color
also determines the look of the object when using translucency. For more information, please see the Fog Color
Parameter and Fog Multiplier Parameter examples below.
Fog Multiplier – Smaller values reduce the effect of the fog, making the material more transparent. Larger values
increase the fog effect, making the material more opaque.
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Fog Bias – Changes the way the fog color is applied. Negative values make the thin parts of the objects more
transparent and the thicker parts more opaque and vice-versa (positive numbers make thinner parts more opaque and
thicker parts more transparent).
IOR – Specifies the index of refraction for the material, which describes the way light bends when crossing the material
surface. A value of 1.0 means the light will not change direction. For more information, please see the Refraction IOR
Parameter example below.
Refraction Glossiness – Specifies the sharpness of refractions. A value of 1.0 produces perfect glass-like refraction;
lower values produce blurry or glossy refractions. Use the Subdivs parameter below to control the quality of glossy
refractions. For more information, please see the Refraction Glossiness Parameter example below.
Affect shadows – When enabled, the material will cast transparent shadows, depending on the refraction color and the
fog color. This only works with V-Ray shadows and lights.
Max depth – Specifies the number of times a ray can be refracted. Scenes with lots of refractive and reflective surfaces
may require higher values to look right.
Affect channels – Specifies which channels will be affected by the transparency of the material.
Color Only – The transparency of the material will affect only the RGB channel of the final render.
Color+alpha – Causes the material to transmit the alpha of the refracted objects instead of displaying an opaque
alpha. Note that currently this works only with clear (non-glossy) refractions.
All channels – The transparency of the material will affect all channels and render elements.
Dispersion
Dispersion – When enabled, true light wavelength dispersion will be calculated. For more information, please see the
Dispersion example below.
Abbe – Increases or decreases the dispersion effect. Lowering it widens the dispersion and vice versa.
Translucency
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Type – Selects the algorithm for calculating translucency (also called sub-surface scattering). Note that Refraction
must be enabled for this effect to be visible.
Hard (wax) model – This model is specifically suitable for hard materials like marble.
Color+alpha – This is the most realistic SSS model and is suitable for simulating skin, milk, fruit juice and other
translucent materials.
Back-side Color – This parameter allows you to additionally tint the SSS effect.
Scatter Coeff – The amount of scattering inside the object. 0.0 means rays will be scattered in all directions; 1.0 means
a ray cannot change its direction inside the sub-surface volume.
Fwd/back Coeff – Controls the direction of scattering for a ray. 0.0 means a ray can only go forward (away from the
surface, inside the object); 0.5 means that a ray has an equal chance of going forward or backward; 1.0 means a ray
will be scattered backward (towards the surface, to the outside of the object).
Thickness – Limits the rays that will be traced below the surface. This is useful if you do not want or don't need to trace
the whole sub-surface volume.
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Refraction color = Black Refraction color = Light Gray Refraction color = White
(0, 0, 0) (192, 192, 192) (255, 255, 255)
no refraction
This example demonstrates the effect of the Fog color parameter. Notice how the thick areas of the object are darker in
the two images on the right because of the light absorption of the fog.
This example demonstrates the effect of the Fog multiplier parameter. Smaller values cause less light absorption
because of the fog; while higher values increase the absorption effect.
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Refraction IOR = 0.8 Refraction IOR = 1.0 Refraction IOR = 1.3 Refraction IOR = 1.8
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This example demonstrates the effect of the Refraction depth parameter. Note how too low of a refraction depth
produces incorrect results. Also, in the last two examples, note how areas with total internal reflection are also affected
by the Reflection depth .
Example: Dispersion
This example demonstrates the Dispersion capabilities of the V-Ray material and the effect of the Abbe parameter.
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This example demonstrates the differences between the BRDFs available in V-Ray. Note the different highlights
produced by the different BRDFs.
BRDF type = Phong BRDF type = Blinn BRDF type = Ward BRDF type = GGX
This example demonstrates the effect of the GTR tail falloff parameter.
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GTR tail falloff: 0.01 GTR tail falloff: 1.0 GTR tail falloff: 2.0
(default value)
This example demonstrates the effect of the Anisotropy parameter. Note how the different values stretch the
reflections horizontally or vertically.
Anisotropy = -0.9 Anisotropy = -0.45 Anisotropy = 0.0 Anisotropy = 0.45 Anisotropy = 0.9
no anisotropy
This example demonstrates the effect of the Rotation parameter. For all the images in this example, the Anisotropy
parameter itself is 0.8.
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Opacity
Opacity – Specifies how opaque or transparent the material is. A texture map can be assigned to this channel.
Normal – The opacity map is evaluated as normal. The surface lighting is computed and the rays is continued for
the transparent effect.
Clip – The surface is shaded as either fully opaque or fully transparent depending on the value of the opacity
map(i.e. without any randomness). This mode also disables the filtering on the opacity texture. This is the fastest
mode, but it might increase flickering when rendering animation.
Stochastic – The surface is randomly shaded as either fully opaque or fully transparent so that on average it
appears to be with the correct transparency. This mode reduces lighting calculations but might introduce some
noise in areas where the opacity map has grayscale values. The opacity texture is still filtered as normal.
Custom Source – When enabled, V-Ray uses an alpha channel to control the material opacity.
Diffuse Texture Alpha – The diffuse texture alpha channel controls the opacity. Diffuse Texture Alpha source
works the same way as Diffuse Map Alpha as Transparency legacy option from the V-Ray versions before 3.60.
Opacity Texture Alpha – The opacity texture alpha channel controls the opacity, instead of the default texture
intensity. If there is no texture in the source slot, the option will be ignored.
Advanced Options
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Double-sided – When enabled, V-Ray will flip the normal for back-facing surfaces with this material. Otherwise, the
lighting on the "outer" side of the material will be computed always. This can be used to achieve a fake translucent
effect for thin objects like paper.
Glossy Fresnel – When enabled, uses glossy fresnel to interpolate glossy reflections and refractions. It takes the
Fresnel equation into account for each "microfacet" of the glossy reflections, rather than just the angle between the
viewing ray and the surface normal. The most apparent effect is less brightening of the grazing edges as the glossiness
is decreased. With the regular Fresnel, objects with low glossiness may appear to be unnaturally bright and "glowing" at
the edges. The glossy Fresnel calculations make this effect more natural.
Use irradiance map – When enabled, the irradiance map will be used to approximate diffuse indirect illumination for
the material. When disabled, brute force GI will be used. This can be used for objects in the scene which have small
details and are not approximated very well by the irradiance map.
Fog Units Scaling – When enabled, the fog color attenuation becomes dependent on the current system units.
Linear workflow – When enabled, V-Ray will adjust sampling and exposure to use the Gamma 1.0 curve. This is
disabled by default.
Cutoff Threshold – A threshold below which reflections/refractions will not be traced. V-Ray tries to estimate the
contribution of reflections/refractions to the image, and if it is below this threshold, these effects are not computed. Do
not set this to 0.0 as it may cause excessively long render times in some cases.
Energy preservation – Determines how the diffuse, reflection and refraction color affect each other. V-Ray tries to keep
the total amount of light reflected off a surface to be less that or equal to the light falling on the surface (as this happens
in the real life). For this purpose, the following rule is applied: the reflection level dims the diffuse and refraction levels (a
pure white reflection will remove any diffuse and refraction effects), and the refraction level dims the diffuse level (a pure
white refraction color will remove any diffuse effects). This parameter determines whether the dimming happens
separately for the RGB components, or is based on the intensity.
RGB – Causes dimming to be performed separately on the RGB components. For example, a pure white diffuse
color and pure red reflection color will give a surface with cyan diffuse color (because the red component is already
taken by the reflection).
Monochrome - This mode causes dimming to be performed based on the intensity of the
diffuse/reflection/refraction levels.
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Multipliers
Mode – Specifies if Multiplier or Blend Amount parameters will be used to control the intensity of other parameters.
Multiplier – For applicable parameters, intensity will be controlled through a Multiplier parameter.
Blend Amount – For applicable parameters, intensity will be controlled through a Blend Amount parameter.
IOR – Controls the intensity of the Index of Refraction value when calculating refraction.
Material Options
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Can be Overridden – When enabled, the material will be overridden when you enable the override color option in the
Global Switches.
Alpha contribution – Determines the appearance of the object in the alpha channel of the rendered image.
Normal (1) – A value of 1.0 means the alpha channel will be derived from the transparency of the material.
Ignore in Alpha (0) – A value of 0.0 means the object will not appear in the alpha channel at all.
Black Alpha (-1) – A value of -1.0 means that the transparency of the material will cut out from the alpha of the
objects behind.
ID Color – Allows you to specify a color to represent this material in the Material ID VFB render element.
Cast Shadows – When disabled, all objects with this material applied will not cast shadows.
Only in Secondary – When enabled, objects with this material applied will only appear in reflections and refractions
and will not be directly visible to the camera.
Maps
Bump/Normal Mapping
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Bump Map
Local Space Bump
Normal map
Advanced Options
Tangent space
Object space
Screen space
World space
Delta Scale – Decrease the value of the parameter to sharpen the bump, increase it for more blurry effect of the bump.
Displacement
2D Displacement – Bases the displacement on a texture map that is known in advanced. The displaced surface is
rendered as a warped height-field based on that texture map. The actual raytracing of the displaced surface is
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done in texture space and the result is mapped back into 3D space. The advantage of this method is that it
preserves all details in the displacement map. However, it requires the object to have valid texture coordinates.
You cannot use this method for 3d procedural textures or other textures that use object or world coordinates. The
parameter can take any values.
Normal Displacement – Takes the original surface geometry and subdivides its triangles into smaller sub-
triangles, which then are displaced.
Amount – The amount of displacement. A value of 0.0 means the object appears unchanged. Higher values produce a
greater displacement effect. This parameter can also take a negative value, in which case the displacement pushes
geometry inside the object.
Shift – Specifies a constant, which is added to the displacement map values, effectively shifting the displaced surface
up and down along the normals. This can be either positive or negative.
Keep continuity – When enabled, tries to produce a connected surface, without splits, when there are faces from
different smoothing groups and/or material IDs. Note that using material IDs is not a very good way to combine
displacement maps since V-Ray cannot always guarantee the surface continuity. Use other methods (vertex colors,
masks etc.) to blend different displacement maps.
View dependent – When enabled, Edge length determines the maximum length of a subtriangle edge in pixels. A
value of 1.0 means that the longest edge of each subtriangle is about one pixel long when projected on the screen.
When disabled, Edge length is the maximum sub-triangle edge length in world units.
Edge length – Determines the quality of the displacement. Each triangle of the original mesh is subdivided into a
number of subtriangles. More subtriangles mean more detail in the displacement, slower rendering times and more
RAM usage. Less subtriangles mean less detail, faster rendering and less RAM. The meaning of Edge length depends
on the View dependent parameter.
Max subdivs – Controls the maximum sub-triangles generated from any triangle of the original mesh when the
displacement type is Subdivision. The value is in fact the square root of the maximum number of subtriangles. For
example, a value of 256 means that at most 256 x 256 = 65536 subtriangles will be generated for any given original
triangle. It is not a good idea to keep this value very high. If you need to use higher values, it will be better to tessellate
the original mesh itself into smaller triangles instead. The actual subdivisions for a triangle are rounded up to the
nearest power of two (this makes it easier to avoid gaps because of different tessellation on neighboring triangles).
Water Level – Clips the surface geometry in places where the displacement map value is below the specified threshold.
This can be used for clip mapping a displacement map value below which geometry will be clipped.
Environment Overrides
Allows Background, Reflection, and Refraction maps from Environment Settings to be overridden for the current
material.
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Background Environment
Reflection Environment
Refraction Environment
Binding
Binding – Enables connection/binding between V-Ray and the corresponding base application material.
Color – Enables color binding. Changing the V-Ray material color changes the corresponding base application material
color and vise versa.
Texture – Enables texture binding. Changing the V-Ray material texture changes the corresponding base application
material texture and vise versa.
Auto – By default binds the Diffuse texture to the base app material. Clicking on the "eye" icon for a texture used in
the shader hierarchy, changes the binded map to the newly selected one.
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Texture Helper – Allows the use of a helper texture as a base application material map. The same helper is used if
the binded texture is a procedural map. This is useful if every time you have to set texture placement for a map
that can't be displayed accurately in the base app.
Disabling this parameter allows changing the base app material texture without affecting the V-Ray material.
Opacity – Enables opacity/ transparency binding. Changing the V-Ray material refraction changes the corresponding
base application material opacity/ transparency and vise versa.
Notes
Use the VRayMtl/VRayBRDF whenever possible in your scenes. This material is specifically optimized for V-Ray
and often GI and lighting is computed much faster for V-Ray materials than for standard materials. Many V-Ray
features (e.g. light cache, render elements ) are guaranteed to work properly only with VRayMtl and other V-Ray
compliant materials.
VRayMtl can produce reflections/refractions for matte objects - see Wrapper Material | MtlWrapper.
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