Possibly Unexpected Ways To Use Nodes

[3dcheapskate]

Have you ever found an interesting, and possibly unusual or unexpected, way to use any of the material room nodes ? If you have then please share

I'll start.

The Cellular node (New Node > 3D Textures > Cellular) has given me several pleasant surprises.

The first one is that if you set mode 3, a large scale, and high turbulence, and plug that into displacement for a groundplane you can get a nice windblown sand effect. Or maybe tidal mudflats?

Here's the setup as applied to the default Poser 6 groundplane to get the render above.

It's definitely worth fiddling with EVERYTHING on the Cellular node !

 

[Miss B]

Ohhh, that does look like windblown sand. Nice.

 

[3dcheapskate]

You know those faked metallic reflection maps? The ones that look like swirly silver? You can make something similar with a Cellular node.
Mode 3 and a high turbulence value are the key.

 

[3dcheapskate]

But this is possibly my very favourite use of a Cellular node - glitterly multicolour specular highlights on insect/fairy wings !
Note that it's VERY dependent on the lighting and it's rather hit-and-miss, and there may be better ways to achieve this effect.
The render on the right doesn't use any Cellular (and Specular_Value is 1.0). Poser 9 renders with IBL and an infinite.

The key settings are Mode 5, RandomColor, and a very small scale, plugged into the SpecularColor input of the PoserSurface.
Multiplying two similar (but different - note the scale and jitter settings) Cellular nodes is something that hit me in the last half-hour - with just one, which is what I was using before today, the colours are too bright and too white. Since the colours are now darker I needed to increase Specular_Value



(edit - whoops! I forgot to multiply the wing transparency map with the Specular_Strength on my renders !)

 

[Pendraia]

Nice work...

 

[Miss B]

Interesting tests. One of these days I'm going to really sit down and play with a lot of the available nodes in Poser so I can utilize the Material Room better.

 

[Ken1171]

The power of the Material Room never ceases to amaze me! ^^

 

[Miss B]

Me too.

 

[3dcheapskate]

Here's an unusual one I just found. Using one 3D Texture node to drive random inputs of another 3D Texture node can give you some rather psychedelic results...

 

[sanbie]

Oh wow when I opened the image for a larger view...my eyes went all funny and it was like the image was moving...spooky!

 

[Ken1171]

You have found a way to randomize a procedural node. ^^

 

[Mythocentric]

Now I'm excited! Looks like more late-night playtimes coming up!

 

[3dcheapskate]

I'd seen this sort of thing a few times before, i.e. plugging one 3D texture node into the inputs of another 3D texture node. Traveler's 2009 (!) "Inside a Material 01 - Rusty Pitted Iron" (in the RDNA Poser tutorials forum) was a really nice step-by-step, showing the tip of the iceberg, and a definite inspiration.

One thing I discovered - my predictions of what would happen if I plug 3D texture A into input B of 3D texture C are usually so far off the mark that it's unbelievable ! I was actually trying to find a way to make the repeating pattern created by the cellular less obvious (yesterday's "Making 'Random' Procedural Shaders Less... Well... Repeating (PP2014/Firefly)" thread in the SM Poser forum) when I entered the realm of pschedelia...

Since the results are difficult to predict, please do post any interesting combinations you find here.

 

[3dcheapskate]

Guess what this is ? (see Render 1.jpg - PP2014 Firefly render)

I accidentally applied my patchy grass shader to the Sixus1 orc. Here's the render with the standard orc shader (See render 2.jpg)


And here's the patchy grass shader that I accidentally applied - it's from a freebie at ShareCG - Some Poser Firefly Ground Shaders - Poser - ShareCG (see shader.jpg)

 

[ockham]

I ran into a similar windblown effect when trying to make a 'dirty city snowbank'. It worked much better than I thought it would!

 

[Ken1171]

It came out pretty good for the simple shader. ^^

 

[3dcheapskate]

I was trying to use the cellular node to create large distinct patches of different shades of green, plus a turbulence node driving a ridiculously large displacement (60 inches). I had the intention of using a noise node or something like that to give small detail. But luckily I messed up...
I was using Porsimo's morphing ground with the 'Hills' morph set to 1, and here's the render that made me think "whoa! That looks like distant foliage on a hill":

Here's the shader:

And here's a huge high res render I did of exactly the same thing. It could still pass for distant foliage I think:

I think I added the second turbulence node to get around the repeating pattern that 'Poser nodes that create a 'random' pattern inevitably produce.

 

[Ken1171]

Looks great! Just a pity SF doesn't support micro-poly displacement. So far this will be FF-only.

 

[Miss B]

I think 3dcheapskate's on PP2014, so can't try it out in SF. Maybe sometime in the near(?) future, SF will support micro-poly displacement.

 

[3dcheapskate]

Miss B's correct - although I have Poser 11 I don't use it. I'm a micro-polygon displacement fiend, so I don't approve of the retrogradation provided by Superfly and iRay ! (My proudest boast to date is that I made an 8' cube with an almost 8' displacement that gloops* wonderfully!)

Anyway, back to the present moment - I tried this latest cellular+turbulence material on a huge 2-dimensional polo mint (i.e. a flat circular plane with the centre cut out) thinking that I might be able to use it for distant forested hilltops inside an environment dome. It didn't look so good. It also didn't look so good on a sphere.

Hmmm... I wonder what it would look like on an 8' amoeba ?


*that's the technical term for the auto-perambulation mechanism of a giant amoeba.