Node improvements

[Mohamed Salah Bchir]

15 materials, about 60 more to be added. All for different labels. I would rather not use Photoshop to overlay logos. How to make sense of this?

[designgestalt]

hello Mohamed,

I am not sure, if I understood your problem here:
you are saying, that you have one material, but you have to apply more than 60 labels for different variations? is that correct?
I have a similar setup for one of my clients, but I apply all labels onto the same material and activate the label I need and deactivate the ones I do not need.
but than again I do not have so many different labels... but maybe that is a bit more clear to dig through ...

cheers
designgestalt

[Mohamed Salah Bchir]

Yes i have 72 labels on the same material, i'm using multi material. The reason i'm doing this is that i can use multi material when rendering, otherwise i would have to activate and render, activate and render etc...isn't that so?
Also this is a long term client so i may use these in the future, so having them ready is good.

[designgestalt]

hello Mohamed,
yes, you are correct, that is the downfall of my method and as you figured out, this is far from efficent !
but the benefit is (at least in my case) that I only have to change one main material, if I need i.e. another color for the same model with different color variations.
but again: i have to change around maybe ten labels, not 72 (!!!)
for your case I do not have an instant solution, I can imagine that this is a pain ....
cheers
designgestalt

[Eugen Fetsch]

You can name your labels from 1 to 72 and assign them as Video Label instead of texture label. You can then render 72 frames of animation, where every single frame will change the label to the next one.

Hope that helps.

Cheers

[andy.engelkemier]

I usually fix that manually. If I have one texture, I instance it. It looks like you have the same image over and over. And that's the default for keyshot. But instead, you can just use the same label for multiple multi-materials.
So say I create a black plastic. It has a white plastic material label with my texture map creating the opacity.
Then I create a glass material with the same label. Instead of creating it with the same label, just drag the same white plastic label material into the label of the glass. One advantage, other than just cleaning up the Giant mess that gets created, is if you make a change to your texturemap, it updates for all of your materials at once.
A downside though, is once you add lots of materials, the tree doesn't sort well. You have to kind of pull things apart manually.

I REALLY wish keyshot would allow you to stack multi-materials also, to help avoid this issue. Right now, if you have 5 materials that all need 5 different labels, you need to create 25 separate materials. But really, you should be able to just create 2 multimaterials of the 5 materials. But keyshot doesn't give access to materials that aren't directly applied to eachother, and doesn't allow you to stack multi-materials. So, you get to make every single material.

Now, I know you said you don't want to apply them all in photoshop, but have you thought about just rendering your object in all the material options and rendering out a Mask for the label? This creates a lot of flexibility as well because if you change a label, you only have to re-render your mask.

For color exploration, we used to render out an entire product as black, white, mid-gray, satin metal, and chrome. Then we'd render out essentially a clown mask for creating masks between things. That allows you to create Most any color and finish you want that doesn't have textures, in photoshop without re-render. This was back when a 3K render took like 10 hours where now you can do the same 7k render in 15 minutes. But still, the same concept applies for labels. I still do it occasionally if someone wants a logo application or something, but just wants to explore. No reason to do 72 renders in my case.

[INNEO_MWo]

That's a great idea, Eugen!

[Mohamed Salah Bchir]

I usually fix that manually. If I have one texture, I instance it. It looks like you have the same image over and over. And that's the default for keyshot. But instead, you can just use the same label for multiple multi-materials.
So say I create a black plastic. It has a white plastic material label with my texture map creating the opacity.
Then I create a glass material with the same label. Instead of creating it with the same label, just drag the same white plastic label material into the label of the glass. One advantage, other than just cleaning up the Giant mess that gets created, is if you make a change to your texturemap, it updates for all of your materials at once.
A downside though, is once you add lots of materials, the tree doesn't sort well. You have to kind of pull things apart manually.

I REALLY wish keyshot would allow you to stack multi-materials also, to help avoid this issue. Right now, if you have 5 materials that all need 5 different labels, you need to create 25 separate materials. But really, you should be able to just create 2 multimaterials of the 5 materials. But keyshot doesn't give access to materials that aren't directly applied to eachother, and doesn't allow you to stack multi-materials. So, you get to make every single material.

Now, I know you said you don't want to apply them all in photoshop, but have you thought about just rendering your object in all the material options and rendering out a Mask for the label? This creates a lot of flexibility as well because if you change a label, you only have to re-render your mask.

For color exploration, we used to render out an entire product as black, white, mid-gray, satin metal, and chrome. Then we'd render out essentially a clown mask for creating masks between things. That allows you to create Most any color and finish you want that doesn't have textures, in photoshop without re-render. This was back when a 3K render took like 10 hours where now you can do the same 7k render in 15 minutes. But still, the same concept applies for labels. I still do it occasionally if someone wants a logo application or something, but just wants to explore. No reason to do 72 renders in my case.

I don't have the same image, they were different images.

[Eugen Fetsch]

I don't have the same image, they were different images.

Have you tried my solution? It would reduce your node setup to 4 nodes.

That's a great idea, Eugen!

Thanks Marco

[andy.engelkemier]

Ah, sorry. I could only see the name, which are trancated, so it looked like it was the same texture, at least for the area I zoomed in to.

Scrolling across, it looks like you're rendering metal printed on glass? Video texture would work, sure. But if the metal isn't noticeably in the reflection or shadow then I would still end up doing that in photoshop. You just render the glass, then you render the metal. Then apply the texture as a mask for the metal.

The trick there is you create a smart object Before transforming. The smart object can contain layer compositions that get passed through to your final file. So that file is just a stack of All your labels. If you have never used layer comps, they are a Huge lifesaver. Even if you go the video route you'll probably still want them. Since you're rendering glass, unless you're spending a month rendering caustics then you'll probably need to render out a separate shadow pass anyway.
So you can set up the file, then you run a script "layer comps to files" to save all of your images. Don't do tiff. It will save GIANT layered tiff files without giving you the option of Not doing that.

We do any multi-color renders all in one photoshop file, but set up layer comps for final output. If it's the same camera shot, inevitably, you'll reuse a few edits here and there. So this saves lots of time and space.

Depending on shape and label application, you may need to go the video texture method, so don't overlook AfterEffects as an editing tool as well. In some ways it is quite a bit more capable than photoshop. Better procedural...well, everything. I once created a full brochure in AfterEffects because the client wanted to update a custom color for every product in the brochure, and every label. All I had to do, once I set it up, was specify the color, update one single label image, render out the spread to an image sequence, and compile the PDF. It even outputted a spread for print at the same time. It's a good example of why developers shouldn't ever restrict users to use the tool the way they intend.

[mattjgerard]

Depending on shape and label application, you may need to go the video texture method, so don't overlook AfterEffects as an editing tool as well. In some ways it is quite a bit more capable than photoshop. Better procedural...well, everything. I once created a full brochure in AfterEffects because the client wanted to update a custom color for every product in the brochure, and every label. All I had to do, once I set it up, was specify the color, update one single label image, render out the spread to an image sequence, and compile the PDF. It even outputted a spread for print at the same time. It's a good example of why developers shouldn't ever restrict users to use the tool the way they intend.

Coming from 15+ years in the video/motion graphics world, I can't agree more. In many ways AE is superior to PS in a lot of things. I have done the same, especially for agency packages that include video templates, bumpers, web gifs, banners, mailers, etc that all are based on the same CSS plan, colors, shapes ,graphics, etc. So easy to create a color master comp and control all the color pallets from one place and have them propogate to the rest of the assets. I think indesign can do this in a limited screwed up way, but AE is the only one that can handle pretty much any format, size and DPI setting. You can render out animations and magazine covers from the same project. Making that all work takes more than intermediate knowledge, but its pretty damn cool.

[andy.engelkemier]

Yeah, that stuff is NOT easy for AE beginners. Shoot, I had been using it for maybe 6 years first and didn't know how to create a master color in one composition control the colors of All the compositions yet. It just hadn't come up in my previous work.
Yeah, too many things in inDesign are hacks for my taste. I've figured out some ways to do a lot more non-destructive things in photoshop as well.
Like, did you know that you can't free transform vector objects in photoshop? But you CAN if you convert the smart object to a smart object? So dumb. So you copy the illustrator artwork into photoshop as a smart object. Now, right click on that object and convert to smart object. That creates a PSB embedded in photoshop, which now contains your illustrator smart object. But you can free transform it and it's still vector....sort of. Unlike AE though, you have to manually update the object. But hey, at least now you can recolor things in illustrator.
Oh how I wish to have better color control in photoshop though. I would love to see Adobe make something like inDesign that was much more like AE.