Ok, I'm a big fan of Eric Winemiller's plugins since he wrote Tiles waaaay back in the day.... But I just don't get the Anisotropic highlights in ShadersPlus. I've tried it with various metal shaders and I don't think I'm seeing any results. Should the reflection channel be at 0%? What is an ideal metal for this effect, and when should it be used? I've seen the sample images in the DCG gallery. The silk top is very cool, but I'd be happy just to get the brushed metal machine-part look. holly

The shader is a little difficult to set up to best effect. Tips: in the shader room do your adjustments while looking down the axis of one of the lights in the preview window. Fuss with the x and y roughness controls. If you are doing a round object there will be one way that works best. The amount of x and y takes some testing. Don't forget to use the Value(0-1000) in the Highlight channel. I typically use values >200 The Shininess channel has no effect. A bump texture map of a brushed metal surface will aid the illusion. The shading has no effect on reflections. It is not possible to get a circular burnished effect with this plugin but Eric is working on it! Til then you have to fake it with a texture map in the color channel. Hope this helps. Ed

Holly,

The current Anisotropic algorithm is highly view dependent and falls off really quickly as the angle between the light and the camera increases. Try moving your camera around so that it's facing the same direction as your lights and then rotate away from there.

It works pretty good for silks, satins, and anodized metals, but doesn't work as well as I'd like for doing the brushed metal look which is why it's currently being reworked. This weekend had a breakthrough in the image quality and now it's down to some loose ends and performance tuning. I'm hoping to have an update in the next couple of weeks that will fix Anisotropic's short comings.

Regards,
Eric Winemiller
Digital Carvers Guilds
3D plug-ins for Carrara
http://digitalcarversguild.com

Here's a sample of the updated Anisotropic shader. There's still some artifacts to clean up, but it's nearly finished. This is the default settings, with just the highlight pushed up to 100%.

Regards,
Eric

Niiice.

Can't wait!

Could you post views of the same with the old Anisotropic Lighting Model? Or don't you have simultaneous builds? Would be nice to see a comparison. ;)

Actually I can, here's the original Shaders Plus Anistropic shader. The luster (is that the word?) on the bottom I think looks nice, but it doesn't have that signature look.

Here's today's build, same scene I posted earlier, but with the artifacts I was still tracking down at that time corrected.

Regards,
Eric Winemiller
Digital Carvers Guilds
3D plug-ins for Carrara
http://digitalcarversguild.com

That's impressive. Now the whole chess set for Kix's thread? ;-)

Wow, very impressive, great improvements, both the one with the artifacts and the one without them ;)

Hi folks,

I just posted the improved Anisotropic and a new GI Shadow Catcher. The update is at

Carrara 4.0
PC
http://digitalcarversguild.com/downloads/c4/shadersplus.zip
Mac OSX
http://digitalcarversguild.com/downloads/c4/shadersplus.sit

Free of course for existing customers.

Regards,
Eric Winemiller
Digital Carvers Guilds
3D plug-ins for Carrara
http://digitalcarversguild.com

Thanks Eric!