It’s an interesting idea to use inputs as titles like this, though I don’t think it generalizes well enough. It will work well for some types of nodes and inputs, but then for other nodes we’d need to add different system of organization. The inconsistency of two organization systems would not be ideal.
Before they invest a lot of time into this, we’d indeed need to agree on the design. The end result will be probably be quite different than that mockup.
It’s important to show links go into the panel. But finding some way to create new links when the panel is fully collapsed seems obscure, where you’d have to remember the meaning of the unlabelled sockets.
I think the baseline of opening the panel to edit links is not bad, it doesn’t seem so tedious that it must be made faster. There is room to improve convenience but I wouldn’t do anything that strays far from existing UI conventions.
Not decided? I don’t get it. If they weren’t mutually exclusive, then they would not make sense. If IOR was set to let’s say 1.6, and PBR specular would affect it, and set to let’s say 0.01, then it would not actually be IOR of 1.6. Conversely, if PBR specular was set to 0.5, but IOR would be set to let’s say 2, then it would not be PBR specular of 0.5.
I just don’t see how it could possibly work if both parameters had effect at the same time. And even if it did work, it would be brutally confusing. And that confusion would act as a multiplayer of other confusing gimmicks, such as the metallic edge.
This sounds like Blender is on the way to have the most difficult PBR material to set up out of all the mainstream renderers out there, both offline and realtime.
Hello, giving my point of view maybe it will be useful: in other engines, really the Specular node of blender is the same Reflect in other engines where 0 (0 RGB) is no reflection and 1 (255 RGB) is maximum reflection, I understand here there will not be a color for specular and it really is not important. This translates that the specular is a slider of the power of reflection and not of the Index of Refraction that what it does is 1.45 dielectric and 100 will be a metal (Specular does not allow converting to metal but IOR does).
The metalness is the same 0 is dielectric and 1 is metallic, the difference for example in Vray is that with the IOR I can create a metal but the color of the metal is taken from the Reflect and not from the Diffuse. And when the IOR is fresnel or using the Fresnel Reflections checkbox at the same time using the Metalness making the color take it from the Diffuse. All this is a bit confusing but really the user can use the Specular, the metalness and the IOR at the same time and it is the user who must know how to use them.
If you need me to test with other engines and I can give my contribution on how they interact with all these parameters, I could render some tests showing what happens in different cases…
This is just a legacy material model. Both Corona and Vray are deprecating it in favor of new Principled style materials, so it makes absolutely no sense for Cycles to go in the other direction. In fact, this type of material is now called “CoronaLegacyMTL” in the Corona Renderer for example.
Hello, I know that, but the Specular, the IOR and the Metalness coexist in those engines and it is precisely what I am commenting on. For example, here they commented that the IOR could be given a value of 1 to deactivate it, and that is precisely what they are structuring. Do you have any idea how these settings could work better with each other (Specular, Metalness and IOR)?
Metalness works well with either IOR or PBR specular (not the legacy specular). It’s just that the IOR and PBR specular can not coexist. So it should be two different modes, where you can choose one or the other, but not both at once.
I think I did not make myself understood well, when I mentioned that they coexist I mean that the 3 parameters are visible, obviously even in Vray or Arnold you must deactivate one of the settings for the other to work. I just explained it in the previous text: you use default IOR for dielectric and thus work with Metalness, or disable Metalness and use high IOR values to create metals. I am talking about being able to have the 3 settings at hand and you are talking about modes (Workflows), but you can work with both workflows without affecting the design of the entire interface. Even this is better because you may have library textures prepared for one workflow or another and use them without problem. But this is something that Tobias Häußler on developer.blender.org has even mentioned:
The downside to that is you would have to edit the asset material. Wouldn’t it be convenient if you could also change the Principled node to any of these default presets from within the material editor? Then you wouldn’t have to open the asset browser, search for the material, apply the material and go back to the material editor to make the appropriate changes. In that sense, I do prefer the search box that @Joze proposed, but instead of using this for IOR, it should be at the top of the Principled node.
And if a material preset uses a particular (procedural) texture/ node configuration, this could then also be applied to the Principled node. This would then allow for reusing material assets in a single node tree by using the search functionality in the Principled node.
In addition, there are many very realistic material presets that were created for OSL. Take this procedural wood shader for instance (it was published by Autodesk, so it should be fine to link it here):
I would love to have these advanced materials available as well. @brecht are there any plans to bring OSL over to GPU rendering and have these OSL shaders available as default material presets as well?
Tiling
With regards to random texture tiling, wouldn’t it also be time that the Mapping node incorporates some of the options of the Polygon Uber Mapping node:
Hello, I would like to see some of it within Blender like the Search Box, Uv Randomizer and Clipping Texture. In Max, Advanced wood does not connect automatically, it is manual, these are procedural textures nodes (in blender there are already, Wood’s is not) and not a procedural wood shader for instance as you mentioned.
The Clipping texture or Crop texture I think can be created in Blender using the Set Render Region tool but in the Image editor and so do a non-destructive Crop and in the Shader Editor a node called Crop or Clipping texture node connected to the texture node. But this is to propose in another section and not here since it is about the Principled V2.
The Uv Randomizer (As node) allows you to vary the rotation, scale, offset and intermediate blurring of the Tiling creating a Seamless texture. But like the previous one, it is a new proposal in another area.
The search box is something that is missing in the Shader node and could be added here (but I’m still speculating). but it would be useful
@lukasstockner97 I was really excited to read that you are thinking of a implementation for collapsable panels in the BSDF, as mentioned by you in T99447
As an Artist, I honestly love how Octane handles their “Universal Shader” in Blender because of how compact I can make it and collapse the panels that I don’t use a lot.
On the left BSDF is a Texture image connected to the Anisotropic Rotation (for demonstration purposes only) under the Roughness panel, On the right is the Same BSDF but the Roughness Panel is collapsed to show the behaviour of the Panels.
Hello, I loved that proposal, everything would be more comfortable. It would be good if you publish some collapsed tabs versus those that don’t, something more noticeable
The idea of just keeping the connected socket(s) visible even when the panel is closed/minimized, is Columbus’ egg.
On top of that, a way to better visually group the sections is needed imho
Hello, I agree that having some Sockets at hand is the best but only the most used, for example if you want to create something more complex you can display the panel with just one click (it is true that currently something collapsed in the Shaders is uncomfortable but not as proposed by Emre_Can_Oezcan than by means of these arrows), and it is also faster to open these panels than to add a new node with these functions. Here what we have to ask is which ones will be collapsed and which ones will not to save time
Are there any plans to change how anisotropic rotation works with the new material? As I understand, right now it’s linked to the object’s orientation, so it’s impossible to get certain anisotropic looks on top and bottom of the object (+/- Z axis). It always gives this circular effect with pinching in the center, no matter how you set the anisotropic rotation.
Btw new sheen looks amazing, it should make certain fabric materials look much better.
