ruediger
April 8th, 2009, 17:10
After receiving a request from a user who had seen shaders that we never released in screenshots, I will post them here in the forum.
These shaders are not part of the official distribution, however they are a good resource to see what kind of shader effects you can create by writing your own MetaSL code. Take a look at the MetaSL code and feel free to create stunning shader networks results with it or just use it as a learning/inspiration resource to write your own shaders.
Installation procedure:
copy the shaders to the directory of your choice.
In mental mill, choose "Edit > Preferences... > Path" and add your shader path where you put your msl shaders.
(optional but highly recommended) Add the shaders to a folder in the treeview toolbox: Right-click and select "Add Shader". The shaders will now show up in your toolbox so that you can create instances. NOTE: If you don't get the option to add a shader to a folder in a toolbox, it is locked. You have to unlock it first to add shaders.
There are two surface shader nodes that are nice to work with as well as a fractal node which shows what other stuff you can do with a shader. Though there won't be many occasions where you need a Mandelbrot fractal texture ;) Nevertheless it's a nice example if you always wanted to know how simple it is to code a fractal.
Some usage hints:
Material_easy_material: if you set the edge falloff to something between 0 and 1, you get a more cartoony looking effect. Making the specular relatively sharp and big and using a too bright color for the highlight, gives a very plastic like looking effect. - Ready to create the shaders for your own Toy story ;)
Material_easy_metallic: The inspect specular weights switch, shows how the specular highlight is contributing to the diffuse surface color: Green means, that it adds intensity, red means that is subtracts color from the diffuse lighting. This is not correct in any physical way, but it gives very nice metallic highlights. Note that the specular even contributes to the backside of the object (which is also not realistic but looks nice). You can control this behavior by using the parameter "Backface specular intensity".
Texture_fractal: You can choose between the Mandelbrot and Julia fractal. To see the original Mandelbrot fractal, you must set both Real Startvalue and imaginary Startvalue to zero. Setting "Max Iterations" to a higher value, will give you more detail in the fractal, but will consume more GPU processing power.
The raminaing parameters control size and color of the fractal.
Have fun with these.
Cheers
Ruediger
These shaders are not part of the official distribution, however they are a good resource to see what kind of shader effects you can create by writing your own MetaSL code. Take a look at the MetaSL code and feel free to create stunning shader networks results with it or just use it as a learning/inspiration resource to write your own shaders.
Installation procedure:
copy the shaders to the directory of your choice.
In mental mill, choose "Edit > Preferences... > Path" and add your shader path where you put your msl shaders.
(optional but highly recommended) Add the shaders to a folder in the treeview toolbox: Right-click and select "Add Shader". The shaders will now show up in your toolbox so that you can create instances. NOTE: If you don't get the option to add a shader to a folder in a toolbox, it is locked. You have to unlock it first to add shaders.
There are two surface shader nodes that are nice to work with as well as a fractal node which shows what other stuff you can do with a shader. Though there won't be many occasions where you need a Mandelbrot fractal texture ;) Nevertheless it's a nice example if you always wanted to know how simple it is to code a fractal.
Some usage hints:
Material_easy_material: if you set the edge falloff to something between 0 and 1, you get a more cartoony looking effect. Making the specular relatively sharp and big and using a too bright color for the highlight, gives a very plastic like looking effect. - Ready to create the shaders for your own Toy story ;)
Material_easy_metallic: The inspect specular weights switch, shows how the specular highlight is contributing to the diffuse surface color: Green means, that it adds intensity, red means that is subtracts color from the diffuse lighting. This is not correct in any physical way, but it gives very nice metallic highlights. Note that the specular even contributes to the backside of the object (which is also not realistic but looks nice). You can control this behavior by using the parameter "Backface specular intensity".
Texture_fractal: You can choose between the Mandelbrot and Julia fractal. To see the original Mandelbrot fractal, you must set both Real Startvalue and imaginary Startvalue to zero. Setting "Max Iterations" to a higher value, will give you more detail in the fractal, but will consume more GPU processing power.
The raminaing parameters control size and color of the fractal.
Have fun with these.
Cheers
Ruediger