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Epilogue

Posted by Marius Oberholster on Wednesday, January 3, 2018 Under: News
Hey all!

Don't you just love that title?! Sounds so epic! It was from a concentration standpoint. Goodness! hahaha.

With all the work said and done, we have:

Normal and Bump Mapping


Works with averaging what is there with the map itself. Gives a nicely balanced result. Bump maps are also converted to normal maps, but purely based on a flattened version that is connected to all three axes.

Ambient Light


For this feature, I simply added an emission shader and fed it, based on circumstances, either the final Diffuse or the base diffuse color/texture. It is truly like environment lighting per material!

Working well with other shaders


Like any new shader, it has to function within its environment and cooperate with other elements being mixed or added to it. This simple example is a mix of transparency and the toon shader.

Texturing for both Diffuse and Specularity


A classic feature from Blender Render is the ability to texture both of these areas and now, again, you can texture them separately or individually or not at all. Your choice is yours again!

UI's to make using these very easy


I purposefully gave these very similar UI's so that the end-user would not be confused. I also tried naming things consistently and to make sure that things are organized and would make sense. Of course, with the updates I want to make already, there will be some additions, but I know you're gonna luv them!! You can check out the post on BNPR (to be added later here) for much more detail on these updates.

Anisotropic Shading


This has to be my personal fav feature. Of course, this has not yet been released, but I am so keen on it, because through its creation, GOD has given me multiple answers and method and and and to add to the other shaders to make them just that little bit more flexible for the end user! I am so excited to update those and release this one!!

Do bear in mind that this is not a PBR shader and it is by no means an accurate representation of anisotropy - it is an NPR shader that can certainly be pushed quite a bit! Just look at these opposites:


Another thing to remember here is that I did not use the formula you would usually use for this. It is extremely complex and while I may be led to implement it later, I am very very satisfied with this for now. Thank YOU LORD!!!

Oh, headsup on how it works. It follows the same diffuse as the others, but the difference is that the anisotropy is not light dependent (only from a masking point). The origin or point of the anisotropy is tied to an empty and once object coordinates works, the empty can be in control of both the texture and the burst. That would be amazing!!! Atm, they as miss-aligned, haha. Again, doesn't matter, it's NPR - it's about flexibility, not accuracy (still matters, but way less than in PBR).

Some issues (just two of many):
Brokenness out of camera

Unfortunately, nothing I can do about this. I am just so thankful that the in-camera modes work!

Difference between Eevee and Cycles

You'd think with the goals they have that you would already get at least something similar, but not quite yet, haha. I am glad that both are built to work together though! It means that fancier animations down the line shouldn't be a problem and styles, the same conclusion.

NodeMaps:

I also posted some NodeMaps of all the currently released shaders (all but anisotropic). I made an extra effort to annotate them too, so that you would know what is where within the setup. You can find them on the toon shader page under the downloads.

Rounding off
So after Wasili and I had finished our respective videos (explaining certain aspects of and around the shaders), we decided to release and we shared everywhere we could think of where it would make a difference. Even directly contacting people who have and are still developing various things for Blender.

I have heard back some and it seems like there is a bit of a push against developing NPR stuff. Not making it doable, just against developing something themselves, because it doesn't follow a set guideline and it seems confusing what to do and what not to do, what to take into account and what not to. From a PBR background this makes total sense, because you have a user base of probably billions right now that all want something different. PBR is defined, so almost every one will be happy with it (caustics tend to be caustics regardless of where in the world it takes place, haha). NPR wants those things adjustable beyond the physical laws (just think of squash and stretch for example).

One thing to note is that this is a very big feature request in the infancy stages of a brand new render engine - we should never forget that and also that there are many features that have to come with it - outlines being just one.

The goal
In essence, it is to switch from Blender Render to Eevee (also the Blender Institute's goal in replacing BR with Eevee). Getting toon shaders (even in the form we have them now - thank YOU LORD!) to work, means we do not get lost and forgotten on the fields of eternal render times and the valleys of impracticality, hahaha.

I hope these posts have been extremely insightful and that you are able to do something wonderful with these shaders. Please, feel free to study these shaders and their maps. You are more than welcome to build on it and expand them, etc.! (^^,)

Also, never forget that these shaders are here thanx to GOD for helping us with this. Without HIM, none of this would be possible! :D

Know JESUS yet?

Have a great one!!!

Thank YOU!!!!!!

In : News 


Tags: god  jesus  holy spirit  blender  anime  progress  2.8  development  toon shader  anisotropic 
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