Brecht's Principled Volume Shader

https://developer.blender.org/D3033

The single best news in a long list of best news of late.

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I gues it is gonna represent this Pixar shader: https://rmanwiki.pixar.com/display/REN/PxrVolume

But still “Principled” name is strange choice to me. Does this volume shader really was also invented during production of this Disney cartoon, just like the other one?

could 1 sim do solids (rigid body+ fracture)
liquids, gas and plasma?

It’s extending beyond that with Fire and Heat features. The list of features are being added.

“Principled” is the name used to avoïd “Disney” mention to respect Microsoft License.

So this word “Principled” only retains the idea of an ubershader. Most of settings into one shader and user just have to plug textures in it.

Cycles is already able to render smokes and fire and have a Principled shader for surfaces.
Any body using Cycles can go to this conclusion : a Principled shader for volumes would mean fast and easy shading of volumes as it is for surfaces.
Brecht proposal is based on what Blender have. It is not a copy/paste of Pixar shader.

Brecht does not talk of Crepuscular beams or Motion Blur.

Blender internal have several interpolation filters that are blurring more or less grid data.
We can add subframes and HR subdivisions during simulation baking.
But a motion blur solution at render for smokes or simply for particles of a point density texture would be welcomed.

Why do you keep asking about this in threads that have nothing to do with that subject?

maybe it is a bit of topic but Im afraid that this "principled" shader stuff will end up in all that standard shader things we all see from easy click and make nice render pictures software that looks all the same from people that dont have any idea how things work. Done with software that is realy not that much developed like blender and cycles. No skills for creating “special” shaders are needed anymore.I don`t want to sound overbearing at this point… Maybe I am but hopefully not… I did see realy a lot of tutorials where great skilled people used principled and sell it as " non plus ultra" but it looks much much more crappy than the work they did before. I mean or think that principled stuff is great to mimic pbr and to give similar results like game engines…even if it looks good… is so dull. It helps a lot when creating game content but i beliefe that this “principled” stuff is not the end of the line when realistic renderings are needed. It is cool to make fast and easy standard stuff. Maybe the wrong place and time for my thoughts… sorry about that. To much things in my head and maybe I´m a bit to focused on more freedom that the basic cycles nodes provide us (also if that needs some more work).

The two basic volume shader nodes are not going away, the whole idea of Uber shaders in Cycles is to lower the barrier for people who are just getting started with the engine.

It also gives users an idea of how correct shading works. Eventually, one may replace a principled node with their own node group that does something similar, but with more options.

thanks ace… maybe sometimes I muse to much about development in blender.

cheers

Thank you for making my life easier :slight_smile:

Piet - Making things easy isn’t a bad thing. When Cycles came out, the general level of Blender renders rose to amazing new heights. It helped the perception in the wider world that Blender was a tool that could get the job done as well as the big boys. That has gathered more interest in Blender and it’s development, which benefits all of us.

If making good Blender renders is made easier, that will allow all of us to concentrate more on the finer details, which are what really bring out a good render.

My personal take on the matter is that if it’s easier to get the pictures out of my head and onto the screen, I can make more of them faster and better.

@ Piet , it may have contrary effect. We can not deny that nodetree generated by Quick Smoke preset may be intimidating to newbies.
So, in most cases, they don’t even try to modify color ramp.
Reduced to a simple node, they will not hesitate to play with slider values, change colors or plug textures in the inputs.
Contrary to what you wrote, first impact may be a greater diversity into community renders.

This shader + EEVEE volumetrics, making tests with volumes will not cost time.
Volumes will become more numerous in renders.

@ thomas , tea_monster and zeauro… ok. everything is fine.I appreciate the work that is done here even if it did not sound that way.
was just thinking about things that do not belong here. sorry.

I’ve been testing the Principled BSDF in the last few days courtesy of Andrew Price’s great little Principled BSDF for dummy’s style tutorial.
I was trying to get a smooth ZBrush, 3D Coat and Blender pipeline going with it. It’s absolutely fantastic. Kind on the render times too.

I take a little issue with the idea that this is some how a dumb down for artists. Isn’t it ideally supposed to be about the most productive use of time and sensible smooth workflows ?
There will always be space for custom shaders when desired. But for everything in a scene ? Who has the time for that ?

Blender’s ideally situated for individual freelance artists and small to medium sized studios. The Principled BSDF fits in perfectly there.
Time is money and all that. Extra time to focus on the broader creative side is a very good thing surely.

Forget about the naysayers, in any production you use the tool that does the job in the quickest possible way, if this means using a uber-shader, and if the final output from it does the job, by owe mean, use it, time is money, especially in this field!

Seems Brecht is busy again. Adding an alternative scattering method that seems to work better for thin features.
Cycles: random walk subsurface scattering.
https://developer.blender.org/D3054

Sorry Ignore. Wrong thread. Getting talked about already in the Easter Egg Surprize thread.
Cycles
random walk subsurface scattering.

Things are just moving so fast. Getting hard to keep up. I’m still getting my head around what’s already there.

https://developer.blender.org/D3054

I prefer to think of it as being “for dumb artists” :slight_smile: If using this for the shading, you’re pretty much set for having it setup correctly. If like before, you downloaded or reused from old downloaded asset or trusted youtube tutorials or did your own guesswork - you’re pretty much setup for getting it wrong.

And, it’s only the shading stage. The images below use the principled shader, but for the tiled version there are many nodes doing the tiling. Untiled, a seamless 2k texture shows obvious repeats and is completely unusable as a floor texture.
Tiled using a node setup, same seamless 2k texture you can find areas telling you that it’s from the same texture, but you really have to look for it. If I mixed two seamless textures using different coordinates and scaling and rotation per tile “ID”, it would hide the fact even more.

The idea I’m using is combining two hexagonal texture generators (from brick procedural addon I think) which both outputs grout and “Cell ID”. These IDs goes through noise texture and is added together. Then I add that to object texture coordinates, but also R rescales X, G rescales Y, and B rotates the actual texture differently for each cell. With 2k textures I can scale it bigger and help prevent this lookup to result in too equal sections being used. Well, most of the time. If you look hard, you’ll see neighboring parts obviously coming from the same area of the texture, x and y and rotation outputs not doing enough to hide it (a different seed would help). But still, it looks tons better than simply feeding it a seamless tiled image:




Sorry for small off-topic, but I think Principled Volume should add IOR for volumes, don’t you think? For now Cycles is missing this feature, heat distortions would be super easy and physically correct.

^^
^Would be nice… what’s altogether missing from Cycles… Thread: Cycles - Volume Refraction shader