Metal Shaders for Firefly

[Gadget Girl]

Does anyone know of any merchant resource metal shaders for Firefly? I've been working on the faceplate for WIP: Medieval Finery for Harry

I've tried to figure out what's going on in some of the metal shader's I have on other products, but I really don't understand what's going on in Firefly with these shaders. (I can make a Superfly metal shader, but I want something that will work in Poser 9 and up).

And my web searches for such shaders have failed miserably. Mostly I just find links for Iray shaders, although oddly if I add in the word Firefly, I get lots of shaders for Maya. Not sure why.

And browsing through sites like Renderosity and Daz haven't done well for me either.

 

[Margy]

I really like this product: Pd-Metals Poser Materials
And it's a merchant resource. Details are in the Readme.

Here is a fantastic freebie: orphans.basicwiz.com (EZMetals!)

 

[Gadget Girl]

Oh thank you so much. The on one Renderosity is just what I was looking for. I just didn't see it all when I was looking through merchant resources on their site. Actually I don't think any of parrot dolphin's stuff showed when I tried to filter down to Poser merchant resources. I know I have at least one other set of stuff by them. I should have thought to search by vendor's whose stuff I had.

 

[Margy]

You're very welcome!

 

[kobaltkween]

Plain metals are actually the simplest material you can make. About 99% of metal is just colored reflection. Unless you're trying for something really fancy (adding a patina, verdigris, a special effect, etc.), just plug a reflection node (or a Glossy BSDF node) into your surface and turn off everything else.

What really makes a good metal is a good environment.

 

[kobaltkween]

If you want it to use the fake reflections of specular, just color the specular too and make it very small.

 

[Miss B]

I have that set from PD, but don't think I've used it much.

Thanks for the easy setup KK. I'm going to have to try that myself.

 

[Gadget Girl]

About 99% of metal is just colored reflection. Unless you're trying for something really fancy (adding a patina, verdigris, a special effect, etc.), just plug a reflection node (or a Glossy BSDF node) into your surface and turn off everything else.

I'll have to try that. I do sometimes wonder when buy shaders if people sometimes overcomplicate them to make them look like something you could never do on your own. And of course when it comes to something like looking what someone did with a clothing item, you also don't know if they were starting with something complex, or built it from scratch. I'll have to try out your method.

 

[English Bob]

Here is a fantastic freebie: orphans.basicwiz.com (EZMetals!)

EZMetals are now my go-to shaders when I need a metal surface, and they're public domain according to the licence file, so you can include them freely in your own projects. If nothing else they'll serve as a starting point. However I would recommend setting the ambient value to zero, else they'll glow in the dark, which is not a characteristic of any metals I know of.

I'll have to try that. I do sometimes wonder when buy shaders if people sometimes overcomplicate them to make them look like something you could never do on your own.

It depends on your usage. If you need a gold shader for a piece of jewellery that's only going to occupy a few pixels in the render, then coloured reflections will work fine. However as far as I know, there's no particular penalty for using more complex shaders if they're available.

Some shaders I've looked at seem to have been assembled by throwing in random nodes that don't actually do anything if you analyse them. Maybe it was an attempt to 'watermark' their creation so they could track down copyright infringement, I don't know.

 

[Pendraia]

I know that with Iray, many people use the uber shader but there are many nodes in it that don't seem to do anything I've actually loaded an iray shader and then started to remove nodes in Shadermixer and noticed no difference. I was trying to work out what some of the nodes did and just experimenting with it.

 

[phdubrov]

Almost all nodes in Ubershader Network are pure utility nodes for texture projection, tiling and so on.

 

[Pendraia]

Have you ever noticed that the menu's in the Surface tab change as you add stuff in? It's set up to cover all eventualities. I think people use the uber shader as a base as it allows the end user to pop other things in if they're adjusting the shader.

Not all of the nodes are absolutely necessary for every shader, but with some shadermixer shaders if you want to change things you can't because those items weren't included in the original shader. To add them in you have to go into shader mixer or go back to the DS default and rethink what you're doing.

I think Uber shader was designed to work without going into Shader Mixer as many people find it difficult to use and there is little documentation for it. Many people create shaders using it without going into Shader Mixer because it's already set up for them...at least that's my opinion fwiw.