Multi-material control

[Eric Summers]

I have several multi-materials that are color variations and I'm looking for a way to control values like roughness and refractive index of all the variations together. I've got an idea, but I'd like to give it a sanity check first.

My thought is to use a color to number node with nothing connected on the input and entering the desired value in the 'Output To' field. I've tested this with roughness and it seems to work, so I'm wondering if there are any sneaky gotchas I'm not thinking about. For something like specular, 'Output To' values from 0-100 could be used for grayscale values. Essentially I am treating the color to number node as a number input node.

[INNEO_MWo]

Hello Eric.


Your thoughts follows the right direction. You can use different nodes like 'color to number' (for values) and 'vertex color' (for e.g. opacity or specular) for different parameters.
Details in attached bip file.


Cheers
Marco

[mattjgerard]

Right in thinking. Its just outputting a numerical value that can be used as a greyscale value, its how the data is moved from node to node. Its all just numbers, so as long as the node will accept it, then yeah it should work. I've just seen some areas where a node won't accept certain inputs that seem like they should work, so you might run into one of those.

This is looking more and more like a lite version of expresso in cinema, which is a good thing.

[Eric Summers]

Thanks guys! Always good to have some verification!

I never would have thought about vertex color. Thank you Marco! That's one of those nodes I never really use, but it seems like it would be very handy.

Cheers! 

[mattjgerard]

I just used the ray trace mask node for the first time in desperation hoping it did what I thought it did, and it did! Gotta explore those odd nodes more....