Nope. What I'm talking about had gold and silver brocade (could be any color, I think) mixed with what I'd consider a much better velvet. And it was much, much older.
Probably these (see the velvet with gold and silver in the previews):
Sparkles for Studio
But these seem even better at brocades and metal:
AElflaed's Fancy - Shaders for DS and Poser
Here's a set by HandspanStudios with sequins
HSS Fabric Shaders 1-Glamour
Here's one by DestinysGarden for Iray (I don't think the others are). I'm not absolutely positive that it mixes materials, but it seems to.
DG Iray Bling It! Shaders
And here's Mec4D bringing the typical game style materials to Iray, with lots of metal/paint mixes.
Mec4d PBS Shaders vol.1 for Iray
Generally speaking, this is what the "Metallic" slot in UberSurface is supposed to do. It's there precisely because it's common to mix metal with other types of materials. IMHO, what's trickier is turning that other material into something with complex shading like velvet (because of the volumetric and non-uniform aspects) or satin (blurred anisotropic and _colored_ reflections that follow the weave).
That said, it really doesn't matter what's tricky. It matters whether your shaders look cool and make it easy for people to make their stuff look cool. And your work seems to fit the bill. And I only say seems because I'm just _so_ not a DS user, and avoided making DS content for years because I couldn't figure out what looked cool to DS users. _I_ think these shaders would be popular and know they'd do fine in general. But each software community has a bit of its own aesthetic, so I don't feel like I can speak with certainty about the approval of the DS community.
I realize that metal shaders have been around forever, but what I'm talking about is different because I'm talking about a material that has multiple types of material in one. For instance, in the above dress I've combined a matte black fabric with the mirror-like reflecting stars, and further above, the porcelain with silver and gold, the matte green cans with gold, the white plastic with gold labels. etc. The metallic gold and silver are true reflective metals, not just imitation gold in the diffuse texture, as I've seen lots of places.
Sorry, I guess I wasn't clear. Layered materials have been around a long time, and mixes with "metals" have, too. Metal is just colored reflection. Bagginsbill made his free sequin shader for what, Poser 6? I'm pretty sure no later than P7. I've done this with my own materials for many, many years now. There's tons of layered Poser materials out there, and I sell a set of layered materials you can customize yourself.
My Essential Materials 2 set has been done in terms of production for years now. I just haven't put it out because there are 48 materials that all need documentation, including 6 demo renders a piece. I basically stopped production on the documentation so I could work on other things. I might come back to it soon. It's been _invaluable_ to me in terms of making things for myself. Here are the current materials that are either metal mixes _or_ can be used to make metal mixes:
- Reflective Satin - Lets you set the color of the reflection, to allow for metallic elements
- Satin & Sequins - The sequins use my own tiling mask, but can be replaced with anything you want, mixing metal of any color with satin of any color in the pattern of your choosing
- Old Metal - mix of metal, patina, and scratches
- Corroded metal - mix of metal, discoloration, and rust
- Chain Mail- mix of metal and old leather, both being customized and masked.
- Car Paint - has tiny metallic flakes
- Metal, Paint, & Grunge - what it says on the tin
And I have bunch of other mixed materials like "Dirt" (plain SSS mixed with dirt, for skin or stone with dirt on it), "Mud" (reflective SSS mixed with mud, for wet skin or stone mixed with mud or some other shiny substance), and "Techno Cloth" (patterned cloth mixed with plastic with glowing designs, so 4 different materials).
In short, I'm very familiar with layered materials.
I'm experimenting now to see if I can combine velvet with metallic patterns on it. I also can envision possibly creating fabric with encrusted jewels. That's what the "beaded" or "sequin" dress in several colors above is, although I've increased the tiling to such a degree that you can no longer see the black fabric any more, but it's the same as the dress with the stars, except the stars are transparent "jewels" rather than mirrors.
I believe that my method might be able to produce textures with as many mixed materials as you like - although that would be very complicated. As it is, I have to pay careful attention as I'm creating just the two- and three-material combinations above.
I'm also using this method for the texture set for my glass block bathroom that I'm currently working on to create a mirror with a brushed nickel frame with mirror detailing on it. I may also try to change the regular marble I'm using to have flecks of either silver, gold, or mica - which will be truly reflective, not just specks of white on the diffuse map to imitate sparkling.
I'll post renders as I figure things out, or admit defeat if I realize I'm over-reaching myself and can't achieve the combinations I'm hoping for.
Sounds like you have a lot of really useful ideas. I bet you'll have tons of fun playing with them. I think it might help you to understand a few different things, if you aren't aware of them already.
So DS has two popular ways to mix materials already. One is LIE, and I know jack about it, beyond the fact that people say it does what I like to do, which is mix whole materials. That is to say, you mix metal and cloth or whatever as a whole metal shader and a whole cloth shader using a single mask. The other is the same one that pretty much the entire industry is moving to, and why people are so excited over Quixel and Substance Painter. You depend on those tools to do the mixing for you. You depend on them to make the maps you need, and the maps control properties that give you different shader types. So instead of making a velvet material and a metal material and mixing them, you have one material where the reflective properties of one area fits metal and the other fits velvet, the diffuse properties of one area fits metal and the other fits velvet, etc. You take those maps and stick them into slots of an Uber Base shader (or a PhysicalSurface shader), and there you go.
I have been mixing materials with nodes for years, so I like to do it the way you seem to be talking about: by mixing types of shaders based on a single mask per material type. And both Poser and DS have tools to support this. But the other way, painting textures with special software and depending on multiple maps/masks, is by far the more popular. It's also becoming the standard throughout the 3D world. SubstancePainter and SubstanceDesigner are becoming _the_ way you texture. That's one of the big reasons the "PhysicalSurface" node exists in Poser and the Iray UberBase is the way it is. So it's easier to take those Quixel or Allegorithmic Software generated maps and stick them into slots in the base shader.
This approach lets people pretty much not think about shading and how it works, just generate maps, and stick them in appropriate slots. Which, as you might expect, means that it's _very_ popular.
Me, I don't like to be dependent on one software provider. Quixel, Marmoset, and others work closely with Allegorithmic, who are the only people making the basic materials people mix with those textures, who are the only people who have the lab where they're standardizing the PBRs and their responses, and who are quickly gaining a monopoly on texture painting in CG. And decreasing the general understanding of what materials are. More and more, people are considered "material masters" who only know how to use the maps generated by the software, without understanding what those maps are doing or why they work. Given that trend, I'm holding onto my knowledge and my software independence, while continuing to read and explore what people are doing with PBRs.
But that's at the cost of not entirely going along with the standard. It's harder to forge one's own path. Especially when you decide to keep pursuing knowledge everyone else is leaving to a single company.
I think what you're doing is cool and wonderful. It sounds like it will advance knowledge within the DS community. I just think you should proceed understanding that there's already a very well traveled path regarding mixed materials in DS. Whether you try to widen that path or forge your own is entirely up to you.
