Lesson 4 Extra Modules

This lesson comes with 2 Extra modules. For each module there is a video, and a scene file with the
same name in the Lesson 4 folder.

Advanced Materials
In this module, we go over some of the less commonly used materials:

Car Paint Material - created to simulate car paints the material can be used to simulate a wide range of
metallic surfaces that have a clear coat on top of them. It has three layers - Base, which gives the base
color and reflectivity of the material, Flakes which allows us to add tiny flakes on top of the base layer
and Coat which adds a clear coat layer over the bottom two layers.

• Base Color – controls both the Diffuse and Reflective colors of the base layer.
• Base Reflection – controls how reflective the layer is. Lower values make the layer more diffuse
and higher values make it more reflective
• Base Glossiness – controls how blurry the reflections in the Base layer are. Higher values make
the reflection more clear and lower values make them blurrier.
• Flake Color – controls the color of the metal flakes. Usually this color is very similar to the Base
Color
• Flake Glossiness – controls the glossiness of the metal flakes and works like any other
glossiness parameter. It is not recommended to set this above 0.9 as it may produce artifacts.
• Flake Orientation – controls the orientation of the flakes relative to the surface normal. When it is
set to 0.0, all flakes are perfectly aligned with the surface. When it is set to 1.0, the flakes are
rotated completely randomly with respect to the normal. Usually this parameter should not have
values larger than 0.5
• Flake Density – controls the number of flakes for a certain area. Lower values produce less
flakes and higher values produce more flakes. Setting this parameter to 0.0 completely removes
the flakes
• Flake Scale – controls the scale of the entire flakes texture. Increasing this parameter increases
both the size of the individual flakes and the distance between them.
• Flake Size – controls the size of the flakes relative to the distance between them. Higher values
produce bigger flakes and lower values produce smaller flakes.
• Flake filtering – controls how V-Ray is going to filter the flakes so that there is no noise in the
final image. You can choose between Simple – a fast but less accurate method and Directional
– a more accurate method that needs more RAM and is a bit slower.
• Flake map size – determines the resolution of the Flakes texture. This value should be close to
the resolution at which you will render the final result. This map is kept in the memory and can
 get very big if the Flake map size is set to a very high resolution, especially when the Flake
filtering is set to Directional
• Flake seed – a random seed number from which to generate the Flakes texture.
• Mapping Type – Specifies the method for mapping the flakes. Explicit Mapping Channel is used
when your geometry has proper UV coordinates. In most cases however you will use Triplanar
Projection in Object Space which allows V-Ray to automatically compute the mapping
coordinates.

The Coat layer is similar to the Reflection layer of the Generic V-Ray Material but with Fresnel Reflections
always enabled. This allows us to quickly add a thin reflective coat over our Base and Flakes layers:

• Coat Color – controls the color of the coat layer.

• Coat Strength – controls the strength of the coat reflections when the surface is viewed directly
from the front.
• Coat Glossiness – Controls the glossiness of the coat reflections.

Blend material – A special material that allows us to combine multiple materials and blend them
together using a grayscale value (color or texture).

• Base Material – specifies the material that is used as a base and over which we will add Coat
materials
• Add Coat – clicking this button adds a new Coat material to the stack
• Coat – specifies a material to be used as a Coat layer
• Blend – controls how much of the final result is contributed by the corresponding coating
material. If the Blend amount is white, the final result is comprised of the coat material only, and
other materials below it are blocked. If the Blend is black, a coat material has no effect on the
final result. Gray scale values blend between the current Coat material and all the materials
bellow it. This parameter can also be controlled by a texture map.

Bump material – allows us to add a bump map to any material we have in the scene - some materials
do not have a bump map slot in their settings and this material is the only way to add bump to them.
Stacking multiple Bump Materials together can create a more complex surface material by allowing the
use of several bump maps together easily

• Base Material – specifies the material to which we are going to add a Bump Map
• Map – specifies the map that is going to be used to generate the bump effect
• Bump Mult – controls the strength of the bump effect

Hair material – a material designed for shading of hair specifically. It has a Diffuse component, two
different reflective components and a Transmission (translucent) component. The Diffuse, Primary and
Secondary Specular layers contribute to the way the hair looks when illuminated from the front. The
secondary reflection layer represents the part of the light that enters the hair strand and is reflected
back to the camera, that is why it depends on the transmission color. The Transmission color
contributes to the way the hair looks when it is illuminated from behind.

• Overall Color – a multiplier for all color components in the material used to easily change the
look of the entire hair material. It doesn’t affect the Transparency color.
• Diffuse Color – specifies the color of the diffuse component of the shader. This is used for
materials made out of cloth threads or other non-translucent fibers, as well as for dirty hair. Note
that clean hair or fur does not normally have a diffuse component. We can remove the diffuse
component by setting the Diffuse Amount parameter to 0.0.
• Diffuse Amount – a multiplier that controls how much the diffuse component affects the final
look of the shader.
• Primary Specular – specifies the color of the primary specular component, which corresponds to
light that is reflected off the outer surface of hair strands (see the image above).
• Primary Amount – a multiplier that controls how much the primary specular component affects
the final look of the shader.
• Primary Glossiness – controls the glossiness for the primary specular component. Values closer
to 1.0 make the hair shinier and sleeker. Lower values give it a matted look.
• Lock to Transmission – when enabled (the default), the Secondary Specular color is derived from
the Transmission color. Having this option enabled is the physically accurate way of controlling
the secondary specular component and the hair color is mostly determined by the Transmission
Color component. You can disable it and manually set the Secondary Specular color to get more
artistic control over the way the hair looks.
• Secondary Specular – specifies the color of the secondary specular component, which
corresponds to light that is reflected off the back surface of the hair strands (see the image
 above). If Lock to Transmission is enabled, this value is ignored and the Secondary Specular
color is derived from the Transmission color.
• Secondary Amount – a multiplier that controls how much the secondary specular component
affects the final look of the shader. If Lock to Transmission is enabled, this value is ignored and
the Secondary Amount is derived from the Transmission Amount.
• Secondary Glossiness – controls the glossiness for the secondary specular component. Values
closer to 1.0 make the hair shinier and sleeker. Lower values give it a matted look
• Transmission – specifies the color for the transmission component, which corresponds to light
that goes through the hair strands. This value greatly affects the way hair looks whet it is
illuminated from behind.
• Transmission Amount – a multiplier that controls how much the transmission component
affects the final look of the shader.
• Transmission Glossiness Length – controls the glossiness of the transmission along the hair
strand length.
• Transmission Glossiness Width – controls the glossiness for the transmission component
across the hair strand width.

Advanced Textures
Dirt Map – a V-Ray specific map that is procedurally generated during rendering. It returns one of two
colors (occluded or unoccluded) or a blend between the two depending on whether or not there is
geometry close to the shaded point. This allows us to simulate effects like dirt gathering in crevices or
wear on edges of the geometry. However, the texture is mainly used to create an ambient occlusion
pass. The AO pass darkens the image where the objects are close together in a way fake-simulating
contact shadows.

• Unoccluded – specifies the color that will be returned by the texture for unoccluded areas. A
texture map can be used for this parameter.
• Occluded – specifies the color that will be returned by the texture for occluded areas. A texture
map can be used for this parameter.
• Radius – specifies the amount of area (in scene units) where the Dirt effect is produced. A
texture can be used to control the radius. The texture intensity is multiplied by the radius to
calculate the final radius at a given surface point. If the texture is white at a given surface point,
the full radius value is used. If the texture is black, a radius of 0.0 is used.
• Distribution – controls how the dirt effect is distributed in relation to the contact edges. Larger
values concentrate the Dirt effect closer to the contact edges. To generate proper Ambient
Occlusion this value should be kept at 1.0
• Falloff – controls the speed of the transition between occluded and unoccluded areas. Larger
values make the occluded color fade out faster.
 • Bias X/Y/Z – These parameters force the dirt effect to those directions. Negative values can be
used for inverting the direction of the effect

Curvature - the curvature texture is somewhat similar to the Dirt Map. It allows us to sample a geometry
and detect its curvature. The texture will then return dark values for areas that are dents or holes and
lighter values for the peaks. We can then use this texture to shade these areas differently by using it to
control a Blend Material and blend different shaders. Setting up this texture requires a bit of
experimentation because it greatly depends on the scene scale.

Edges texture - returns one color for the faces of a mesh - Background Color and another color for its
edges – Edges Color. The texture can be used in a Bump map slot of a material which will smooth out
the sharp edges of the geometry. It is important to note that this is only a shading effect and the
original geometry will not be smoothed.

TriPlanar - this texture allows us to assign bitmap or other 2d textures to objects that do not have
proper UVs. The texture projects (one or more) textures along the local axes of the object.