If anyone knows? I'm curious. Just having a play with Gradient_Bump and Gradient_Mode and was a-wonderin'...

Also, when I type in 'matmatic' in search, I get 10 threads.  10? Really?   :-/

Yes it does. I have recently been experimenting with procedural normal mapping by generating values to put in Gradient_Bump as a tangent space normal. It helps to make crushed velvet look real.

These shaders were made with matmatic and the last two on the right use the Gradient_Bump channel.

The last one looks very real.Fantastic.

The same without matmatic ? :D

The same without matmatic ? :D

This is the simplest example I can make that has about 80% of the effect correct. My matmatic material has way more nodes, but many are because of setting up obvious parameters. In this material, it is hard to judge how to change if you want to pretend the fibers are 3 mm long and separated by an average of .3 mm, with .4 mm tips that are fuzzy - this is the sort of thing that matmatic is good for. But you should be able to use this as a basis for visual-feedback based experimentation.

Bloody hell, that's absolutely fantastic, best rendered velvet I've seen!
That's pretty damn amazing Baggins :-)

BTW, have you tried doing Angora, is that possible to do with it having stray fibres extending from the surface?

Thx ;)

Thanks, BB... oh my, those velvet curtains look nice!

How do I reference the Gradient_Mode channel? When I enter 'Gradient_Mode' matmatic spits the dummy. It should accept 3 values (0, 1, 2) right?

I'm using matmatic 1.6... I think (although the Python window say 1.3).

Uhoh. Apparently I have not published matmatic updates in a long time. Doh!

I'll try to put an update together soon. I found some notes describing a few other goodies I added since 1.6.

I just checked and found that I added Gradient_Mode in September, and I didn't even put anything about it in my release notes.

Until I do, I think you can patch matmatic with this. Place this in your script - it will add the attribute if it's missing.

if not hasattr(Surface, "Gradient_Mode"):

Surface.Gradient_Mode = 2 # Make Normal Map (tangent space) the default

Surface.Inputs.append(inum("Gradient_Mode", 2, 3, 1))

Thanks, BB... oh my, those velvet curtains look nice!

How do I reference the Gradient_Mode channel? When I enter 'Gradient_Mode' matmatic spits the dummy. It should accept 3 values (0, 1, 2) right?

I'm using matmatic 1.6... I think (although the Python window say 1.3).

Note: It should accept 1, 2, 3 - enumerated (pull-down) values in Poser materials begin with 1. I don't know why. I just reverse engineered them - not my design.

I take that as a no then!

I take that as a no then!

Sorry for not answering - I have not tried Angora.

No probs, Baggins, would be a useful addition to clothing materials if you could pull it off though.

Until I do, I think you can patch matmatic with this. Place this in your script - it will add the attribute if it's missing.

if not hasattr(Surface, "Gradient_Mode"):

Surface.Gradient_Mode = 2 # Make Normal Map (tangent space) the default

Surface.Inputs.append(inum("Gradient_Mode", 2, 3, 1))

Dontcha GOTTA love Python, though??!? This is so amazingly cool... read this at work on my tablet and struggled ever so to keep my little Hyundai from exceeding the speed-limit getting home to try this! Thank you ever so much, you're an absolute champion! So now, if there's any new nodes or channels, you can just tack them on with this nifty little snippet. AMAZING!! I'll let you know how I get on - thanks again! And yes, it's 1, 2, 3 as parm values... gotcha.

ETA: yup. Worked! You are amazing, Bagginsbill!