mixing materials 101 - niandji.com · mixing materials 101 – multiple materials introduction this...

A tutorial from www.niandji.com

Mixing Materials 101 – Multiple Materials Introduction This tutorial is only intended to help understand the basic principles of mixing multiple materials in Vue. It’s written for Vue d’Esprit 4, but many of the procedures can be used in Vue 5 Esprit and Infinite. Setup You will need to create new a Vue scene, set up as follows-

a. Select the Clear Blue atmosphere from the Daytime folder b. Change camera orientation so it’s pointing up the screen c. Create a terrain – a standard 256x256 random terrain, with the ‘generate fractal terrain’ ticked on.

Resize the terrain in the ‘Z’ axis, to make it 3 times taller, or just drag it up so it looks taller.

(This set up has nothing to do with the materials mixings, it’s just so that it makes it easier to follow the tutorial if every one is using the same or similar settings. You can use whatever settings you want.)


We are going to mix 6 materials on to a terrain to achieve a basic landscape like in the picture below. For this, we will use 4 procedural materials that are included in Vue – 2 of the ones we are using come already mixed! The mixing is carried out over a number of steps, so for the sake of this tutorial, it’s best to save each mixed material before mixing it again.


Ok, let’s go!

a. Select the terrain, then right click on the material view and select ‘Edit Material’ b. Click on the ‘Mix materials’ button in the ‘Type’ box

This is where you mix materials. As you can see the basics of how it all works are shown here. The two materials currently being mixed are the default sandy coloured material and the default black material, used by Vue to show an undefined material.


Mixing Proportions

The slider with the percentage box next to it is the mixing proportions control – you decide how much of each material is to be used. The slider here is very precise – a percentage change of more than 5-6% either way will swamp the mix with the higher percentage material at the default settings. It’s better to change the mix by small amounts (1-2%) in the percentage box as the slider can be tricky to control precisely. As this is a basic principles of mixing material tutorial, the distribution of materials function, the material mixing method, and the smooth blending strip will be left at default settings for the time being – their usage is explained in the Vue manual, pages 188-190 Let’s Mix! Let’s mix the first 2 materials

a. Right click on material 1 in the materials to mix window, and select the Paths in Sand material from the Rocks folder

b. Right click on material 2 in the materials to mix window, and select the Grass material from the Landscapes

folder.


The grass is a pre-mixed material – if you right click on it and select edit material, you can see the materials it is made from. If you opened the Grass material editor window, close it now.


This is material you’ve just mixed applied to the terrain


Influences! Well we’ve got our mixed material, but it doesn’t look very exciting! It’s time to show the power of the ‘Influence of Environment’ editor.

a. In the material editor window, click on the Influence of Environment tab

b. Then click on the ‘Distribution of materials dependent etc’ checkbox to activate the editor.

You can see the editor working right away. Our mixed material has separated in 2 distinct layers. This is caused by the Influence of Altitude, which tells the mix materials editor to make material 2 (the grass) only appear at high altitudes. As the influence slider is set at half way, there is an equal split. However, this only shows what the material would look like on a sphere – if you check the preview window on the main screen you can see what the terrain will look like. For now, set the Altitude slider to 75%, Slope to 50%, and Orientation to 0%, and save the material as “Tut-01” The three sliders give you a great measure of control over where the two materials appear on the terrain; on the next page is a montage using our material with different settings.


More Mixing We are now going to mix the second part of our terrain material.

a. Right click on our material and select ‘Reset Material’. Right click again, select Edit material and then mix materials in the material editor window.

b. Right click on material 1 in the materials to mix window, and select the Sandstone material from the Rocks

folder; c. Right click on material 2 in the materials to mix window, and select the Snowy Purple Stripes material from

the Landscapes folder. d. Click on the Influence of Environment tab and activate the ‘Distribution of materials dependant etc’

checkbox. Leave the settings at default for now and save the material as Tut-02 Here is our second mixed material applied to the terrain


Time to Mix the Mixes Reset the material again, then bring up the material editor and click on ‘Mix materials’ Load Tut-01 as material 1, and Tut-02 as material 2; you should find them in the ‘Personal’ folder of the materials list; then activate the Influence of environment. Here is our mixed material applied to the terrain. Not all the materials in the mix are visible, so we need to make some adjustments.


Firstly we need to change the mixing proportions between our two mixed materials to about 47%. This gives us more of the lower ground material.


Next, click on the materials to mix tab, Right click on material 1 and select edit. Select the Influence of Environment tab and we need to change the following;

Change the mixing proportions to give us more grass, and increase the influence of the slope, so it shows up a bit more. Click on OK This is the effect of those changes


Ch-Changes... Now we need to make a few changes to material 2. Right click on it and select edit. Go to influence of environment and change the following

Change the mixing proportions to give us more sandstone, and decrease the influence of the altitude and slope to 30%, so it gives a bit more of an even spread. Click on OK Here’s the result of the latest changes. Not too bad, but a couple more tweaks are needed – I think it needs a bit more grass and some more snow.


The snow cover is can be adjusted by editing the Snowy purple stripes material. To get to it, just drill down with right click/edit on the Tut-02 material

More grass is easily achieved by simply changing the mixing proportions of materials Tut-01 and Tut-02 in favour of Tut-01; this will show more of the lower slopes materials. I adjusted it to 45.21% for the final picture.


With a quick atmosphere change, a splash of water and a change of camera view, the picture is complete! Conclusion Well that’s the basics of material mixing, and I mean the very basics – there’s so much more not even touched upon here, such as blending, distribution functions, world/object coordinates, each would need a tutorial of their own! Thanks for taking the time to download and look through this hastily assembled tutorial. I hope it has helped. If you are feeling charitable, please leave a comment in my guestbook, I’d really like to know what you thought of it - Who knows, may be I’ll be encouraged to put another one together! May all your renders be great ones, Nick

mixing materials 101 - niandji.com · mixing materials 101 – multiple materials introduction this...

Documents