I've read the manual. I've read the FAQ on Eovia's site. And I still don't understand the color gradient shader. I would have thought that a shader called Color Gradient would be used to make a color gradient, but apparently not. Eovia says it's "used in conjunction with another shader to produce a less rigid transition from one color to another." That sounds like a greyscale gradient. Can it also be used to make a color gradient?

Here's an example. Say you wanted a mountain to go from sand, to green, to brown, to white as you moved up it's elevation. You could use the color gradient to do this. Here's I've used the Elevation shader to go from black to white along the Z axis of the mountain. Next I used the color gradient to transform that black to white gradient to sand, green, brown, and then white.

Does that help?

Regards,
Eric Winemiller
Digital Carvers Guild
Carrara Plug-ins

Eric Winemiller
Digital Carvers Guild
Carrara and LightWave plug-ins

Hi Renderer, Eric's post is a great use of it - here is another way to start playing with it. The color gradient is a very powerful tool but does function differently than you might expect. It is is used to ADD color to black and white shaders in the color channel. Create a set-up like the image above and start playing with it. Then you can let your imagination start to wander a little. For example, if you use this shader with a black and white noise shader in the color channel, you can easily create very complex grunge shaders in no time at all. Mark

Wow! I just want to say thank you to Mark and Eric, and everyone else for that matter who post such informative and thoughtful responses to questions. I learn so much from this forum. Find myself visiting it every day to see what has been posted. I always hope new images are posted - since I like to see what other people are working on, but posts like this are valuable in the idea and technical sort of way. Again, thanks. Good day.

Never Give Up!

Also check out the wood (and some stone) shader presets - they make extensive use of color gradient.

Message edited on: 03/06/2006 16:23

This got me thinking.. could the color gradient be made to react to lights in the scene? FOr instance, if I wanted to make a custom gradient color shift based on where light hits the surface of an object?

Ah... so if i simply want to put a colored gradient on an object, I have to actually apply it to a greyscale gradient. How, uh, obvious. :-| More importantly, thanks for the replies!

jimbo90125 I think you might be able to do this w/ some of the plugins in SSShaders.

No need to think outside the box....
    Just make it invisible.