Maxwell Render

Hi Everyone: I have been using Maxwell for a while but have yet to make my own material. I am looking for metal cable



Do any of you have any advice on how to make this? I think I will have to use displacement but I have NO idea how to start. Should I just model the cable? Thanks in advance to all!!
Cary

Just had to try this myself. I am not much of a modeler so ended up doing it with a material as it wasn't that close to camera anyway. Just make a vertical striped displacement map and then rotate the UV coordinates (or your map) and tile it to get the braiding happening.

Or ask Max if he has a rope material you could work with - I think he did a nice one before, but can't remember for sure right now
b

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Brett Simms
http://www.heavyartillery.com

Thanks Brett! I have never worked on my own material before (or anything with displacement either) so I have to open the manual again and have another look. Thanks!
Cary

Brett: true i do have a rope material, and i almost forgot about it until you mentioned it here now. It could be converted into a wire like what Cary needs relatively quickly.

Cary: Do you need help with this ? btw, i'm curious.. how do you manage to work with 3d and produce renderings if you never created your own materials before

/ Max

Hi Max: Thanks for the reply! I am a goldsmith and jewellery designer, I model in Rhino (4 years) and have been using Maxwell for about a year now.

So far I have been using .ior files and have been concentrating on my lighting setups... learning how to use hdr's and .mxi's as emitters. The ior files have been sufficient until now but the more I learn, the more I want to create my own materials so that I can be more original.

3D is a new world to me and it hasn't been easy learning Maxwell. A lot of the language was really new to me but I am slowly peeling through it !

So the bottom line is YES I would love some help on this. Here is how I suspect that I have to proceed.

* Find a really good photo of a wire/rope
* Convert to .mxi in Mawell Render
* Use a metallic stainless steel or other .mxm file
* Add rope .mxi as a texture

Am I heading in the correct direction? Any help would be REALLY appreciated!!!!

Hiya Cary

Now i understand, you were the goldsmith then you're in for a big transition moving into 3d of this magnitude with Maxwell and all that it requires.

First of all, don't worry about not knowing everything from the start. These things takes time to master and only time and dedication and some skills will make you a talented artist.

The steps you describe are close but not quite as i would do it, here's how i'd get started on something like this..
1. Google for references of similar ropes, wires, cables and such things
2. Look at how these ropes are actually construced, they're a bunch of wires/threads twisted around a central axis to describe it with simple terms.
3. Base the shader around a already existing steel or other similar type metal shader, if that doesn't exist then create a new one or check the MXM Gallery.
4. Create a tilted seamlessly tileable gradient map, tilted something like 35-65 degrees depending on how tight the rope should be.
5. Add the above created gradient map as a displacement and set a height and precision value. Then testrender and see how it looks.

These are the very basic steps i'd take for a shader like this. A suggestion i can make is that you grab my Brushed Aluminium shader from the MXM Gallery and toss out the highres scratchmap from it and instead add a displacementmap for your rope map i described above. This will work as a basic steelcable material once you're done with it.

/ Max

Don't use an mxi for this. Mxi's are for light emitting objects. Just use plain old textures.

_________________
Brian Looney
Maxwell + RealFlow
http://lunatic-studio.com/
Help! I'm dispersing into a haze of probability!

Thanks guys!!! I have been having a hell of a good time using Maxwell! It really is a nice blend of science meeting art. I have figured out that I like creating objects either virtual or real (both are fun), virtual is nice because I don't have the risk of breaking stones and I don't have any messy polish . Thanks for your tips I will start working on this today and will post results and questions as they arise.

Cary

You're welcome Cary it's nice to see you're working so hard to learn more about Maxwell, modeling, rendering, material creation, lighting and all that. I'm looking forward to see your progress on this and ask questions when you done all you can to solve the problems, there will always be someone here to give feedback and help.

I been playing a bit with this material too, couldn't resist it hehe ..this is based on the rope material i created a while back and my Brushed Aluminium material, now with a tweaked rope displacementmap.

It's possible the displacement height is to high now.. but i'm still testing this.



/ Max

Hey Maximus: Thanks for the image it looks really good! Not that I want to cheat in any way but is your rope material anywhere in the MXM library? I did a search for rope but didn't see it anywhere. I would like to see how you put it together for reference.

Thanks, and if this question is out of line please don't take offence I am not aware how and when people share materials and I don't want to put you in an awkward position. Thanks again
Cary

Cary

No problem, and thanks the rope material is not on the MXM Gallery, it needs to be reworked a bit more first before i upload it again. I had it uploaded there a while back but removed it along with everything else because i wasn't satisfied with it. I planned on posting this new "metal rope" here in this thread later on when you worked more on yours so you wouldn't get the final solution just yet.

But i will give you one hint in the form of the displacementmap i used for my examples above. This is only a 8bit version of it but it works fine for testing and learning. Use this texture, play around with it, see what you can do with it. Who knows.. you can with a bit more work produce a better looking shader than i did. That's what i hope for



One last thing, never fear asking questions. Especially not from me if you see a material, texture or whatever else it may be then just ask. Don't think that you can't ask.. that's just silly

/ Max

Very nice start Max

b

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Brett Simms
http://www.heavyartillery.com

Hey Max that is awesome thanks for the start!!! It will be fun to figure this out, I just figured out how to add a brushed texture to my platinum .ior which was wicked. Now I have to figure out how to create textures in photoshop.

Did you create that displacement map yourself using photoshop or some other program? I have no/little idea how to use other image editing programs so I have to learn that as well LOL.

When you say shader you are referring to a texture that "shades" the .mxm?

Thanks again
Cary

Brett: Thank you i'm glad you like it so far..

Cary: no problem, i hope that one gets you started, it should do.. good work figuring out how to add a brushed texture, that's a first step creating textures in Photoshop is no more difficult than creating textures in any other application. It's just different tools, once you learn them you know what and how to use them to get the type of texture you want.

This texture i created using a few different programs, those programs are.. Filter Forge, Gimp and Photoshop.

Shader is the same as material, only a different word for it hehe

/ Max

here is my attempt at making a steel rope. I guess it does not look like an aircraft cable, maybe more like a heavy duty cable...: