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Professional CAD/CAM tools built on Inventor and AutoCAD
Integrated BIM tools, including Revit, AutoCAD, and Civil 3D
Professional CAD/CAM tools built on Inventor and AutoCAD
Combine multiple maps in a complex shading network.
Type:
Tutorial
Length:
5 min.
Tutorial resources
These downloadable resources will be used to complete this tutorial:
Transcript
00:03
That looks pretty good. But we can make this look even more realistic
00:07
by varying that base color.
00:10
So the areas around the edges are going to be a little bit brighter.
00:13
That's going to be a more naturalistic effect.
00:16
First, let's rename this new multiply node.
00:19
We'll call it L CD noise combined
00:22
to combine two different versions of that base color.
00:26
Let's make a clone of this composite node. Once again, hold down shift and drag
00:31
to create a duplicate
00:33
rearrange the graph a little bit here.
00:36
We're going to use a different source for the alpha here.
00:38
So let's delete this connection to the vector map.
00:41
You can select that wire and press the delete key.
00:44
This new composite node
00:46
is going to be the L CD background.
00:49
So let's rename it
00:50
the L CD background
00:53
and we'll take the output of the background node
00:56
connected to the top layer RGB
00:59
of the L CD base color.
01:01
And so far,
01:02
we don't see any difference because we haven't created
01:04
a mask or a variation on our noise.
01:08
We'll pan over a little bit with the middle mouse button.
01:11
So we need to supply something to the top layer alpha here.
01:14
So once again, drag out
01:16
release the mouse.
01:18
This time is going to be a bitmap. So choose OS L
01:21
bit map look up.
01:23
We're prompted to choose a bitmap from our current project's scene
01:27
assets images.
01:29
We've got one in here. Graphics L CD dot PNG,
01:33
that's just a gradient image
01:36
and we need to connect to something. We get a pop up dialogue
01:39
that alpha will only select a floating point input.
01:42
We can't supply an R GB connection there.
01:44
So let's choose luminance,
01:47
which is just the brightness
01:50
in our rendering. We can see the effect of the gradient applied.
01:53
The center here is a different color from the edges.
01:57
We'll select that bitmap node and rename it L CD gradient.
02:01
And in this case, we want this L CD noise combined to be the bottom layer.
02:07
So connected to the bottom layer
02:09
and we can disconnect the top layer.
02:12
The top layer is going to be a color corrected version
02:15
of this noise.
02:16
So let's drag out from the top layer R GB,
02:20
release the mouse
02:21
and choose Arnold
02:23
color
02:25
color. Correct.
02:27
And once again, let's reorganize our graph. So we can see a little bit better.
02:31
We want to connect the
02:32
multiply node to the input of the color correct node.
02:37
So now we've got the multiply node feeding the bottom layer
02:42
and also feeding the color correct, which is in turn going into the top layer,
02:46
we'll select that color, correct node and rename it as well.
02:50
We'll call it L CD noise adjusted.
02:53
And in its parameters,
02:55
let's increase the exposure by one stop. Bring that up to a value of one.
02:59
And now we see that it's brighter around the edges.
03:02
Let's also increase the saturation to 1.3.
03:06
And now it's more saturated around the edges as well.
03:10
All right. That is our shading network.
03:13
It looks a little bit daunting, but it's not quite that complicated. Actually,
03:17
we can make this a little bit easier to see.
03:19
We can select all of the nodes
03:22
and hide the unused node slots.
03:24
There's a keyboard shortcut for that which is h
03:28
might need to press that a couple of times
03:31
and then we can reorganize the graph.
03:33
Click up here on the graph to lay out hall
03:36
and here is our shading network
03:38
zooming in a little bit here.
03:40
We're taking two noises
03:42
multiplying them together
03:44
color correcting it,
03:46
combining it with the non color corrected version to create this gradient.
03:51
That's the background.
03:53
The background is actually the top layer of this composite node
03:57
once again, as I mentioned earlier because the vector map
03:60
is black letters on a white background
04:03
and the bottom layer
04:04
which is anywhere that the vector mask is transparent
04:08
is black
04:10
and then that is supplying the base color.
04:12
We've also got another composite node here
04:14
which is just so
04:15
with two flat colors
04:17
masked off by that same vector map.
04:20
All Right. Cool. So we can close our material editor
04:23
and we can exit out of isolate selection mode.
04:28
We see the Arnold render view update
04:30
and now we've got that L CD screen behind the glass.
Video transcript
00:03
That looks pretty good. But we can make this look even more realistic
00:07
by varying that base color.
00:10
So the areas around the edges are going to be a little bit brighter.
00:13
That's going to be a more naturalistic effect.
00:16
First, let's rename this new multiply node.
00:19
We'll call it L CD noise combined
00:22
to combine two different versions of that base color.
00:26
Let's make a clone of this composite node. Once again, hold down shift and drag
00:31
to create a duplicate
00:33
rearrange the graph a little bit here.
00:36
We're going to use a different source for the alpha here.
00:38
So let's delete this connection to the vector map.
00:41
You can select that wire and press the delete key.
00:44
This new composite node
00:46
is going to be the L CD background.
00:49
So let's rename it
00:50
the L CD background
00:53
and we'll take the output of the background node
00:56
connected to the top layer RGB
00:59
of the L CD base color.
01:01
And so far,
01:02
we don't see any difference because we haven't created
01:04
a mask or a variation on our noise.
01:08
We'll pan over a little bit with the middle mouse button.
01:11
So we need to supply something to the top layer alpha here.
01:14
So once again, drag out
01:16
release the mouse.
01:18
This time is going to be a bitmap. So choose OS L
01:21
bit map look up.
01:23
We're prompted to choose a bitmap from our current project's scene
01:27
assets images.
01:29
We've got one in here. Graphics L CD dot PNG,
01:33
that's just a gradient image
01:36
and we need to connect to something. We get a pop up dialogue
01:39
that alpha will only select a floating point input.
01:42
We can't supply an R GB connection there.
01:44
So let's choose luminance,
01:47
which is just the brightness
01:50
in our rendering. We can see the effect of the gradient applied.
01:53
The center here is a different color from the edges.
01:57
We'll select that bitmap node and rename it L CD gradient.
02:01
And in this case, we want this L CD noise combined to be the bottom layer.
02:07
So connected to the bottom layer
02:09
and we can disconnect the top layer.
02:12
The top layer is going to be a color corrected version
02:15
of this noise.
02:16
So let's drag out from the top layer R GB,
02:20
release the mouse
02:21
and choose Arnold
02:23
color
02:25
color. Correct.
02:27
And once again, let's reorganize our graph. So we can see a little bit better.
02:31
We want to connect the
02:32
multiply node to the input of the color correct node.
02:37
So now we've got the multiply node feeding the bottom layer
02:42
and also feeding the color correct, which is in turn going into the top layer,
02:46
we'll select that color, correct node and rename it as well.
02:50
We'll call it L CD noise adjusted.
02:53
And in its parameters,
02:55
let's increase the exposure by one stop. Bring that up to a value of one.
02:59
And now we see that it's brighter around the edges.
03:02
Let's also increase the saturation to 1.3.
03:06
And now it's more saturated around the edges as well.
03:10
All right. That is our shading network.
03:13
It looks a little bit daunting, but it's not quite that complicated. Actually,
03:17
we can make this a little bit easier to see.
03:19
We can select all of the nodes
03:22
and hide the unused node slots.
03:24
There's a keyboard shortcut for that which is h
03:28
might need to press that a couple of times
03:31
and then we can reorganize the graph.
03:33
Click up here on the graph to lay out hall
03:36
and here is our shading network
03:38
zooming in a little bit here.
03:40
We're taking two noises
03:42
multiplying them together
03:44
color correcting it,
03:46
combining it with the non color corrected version to create this gradient.
03:51
That's the background.
03:53
The background is actually the top layer of this composite node
03:57
once again, as I mentioned earlier because the vector map
03:60
is black letters on a white background
04:03
and the bottom layer
04:04
which is anywhere that the vector mask is transparent
04:08
is black
04:10
and then that is supplying the base color.
04:12
We've also got another composite node here
04:14
which is just so
04:15
with two flat colors
04:17
masked off by that same vector map.
04:20
All Right. Cool. So we can close our material editor
04:23
and we can exit out of isolate selection mode.
04:28
We see the Arnold render view update
04:30
and now we've got that L CD screen behind the glass.
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