Hi All,
Sorry no Blend file to upload (getting to big) I am wondering why or if I it is possible to assign a UV map to only on face of an object? IF so…Why am I not getting a result? I am sure it is something stupidly obvious, but I am new, new to this software. Weeding my way thru a project. I am sure you can relate. V2.71 in Cycles rendering with CPU…seems my Quadro 4000 is slower then my CPU in this version?
Is it because I am not in B render to see a UV map? If that is the case how do you attach this stuff, 2 pass?
a)
There are no “Cycles UVs” and “Blender Render UVs”. UV coordinates have nothing to do with the render engine, but are part of the geometry data. So, once unwrapped, any render engine should be able to work with that information.
b)
Blender Render and Cycles materials should be able to co-exist. So, a node material for Cycles will not vanish if you set up a non-node material for Blender Render and vice versa.
c)
Cycles does not use the “Texture” tab (the part you highlighted in your screenshots) at all. That’s Blender Render only. If you want to assign textures to materials in Cycles, you do that in the “Material” tab or - preferably - in the node editor. So, can we see the node setup for that viewscreen’s material in Cycles?
Hm, try this. In a new .blend file:
Hit Shift-F1, browse to the file we are talking about and click on it. You will now see the contents of that file. Click on “Objects” and then on “2 engineer station top.001”.
That should append only that object into a fresh scene. In Blender’s main menu select File > External Data > Pack into .blend. Save and upload that .blend file to pasteall, which should now be reasonably small (the .blend file, not pasteall…).
Ah, just saw your screenshot with the nodes. That doesn’t work. The only thing that can feed into the material output node is a shader node.
Shaders define how a material reacts to light: That’s why they are the last step in the “food chain” of material nodes. Right now you’re trying to feed a pure color (texture) into the material output, without Cycles even knowing what kind of material that is.
You will need color/texture > shader > material output.
See my above post no. 7: You can’t feed color directly into the material output. How is Cycles to now what kind of material that is? Is it colored glass? Colored light? Colored plastic? Colored metal?
Thanks Ikari I have this result, I will play with it a bit to see if I can get a bit of monitor glow out of it. Any help is appreciated. I was stopped all day on this one. Appreciate the time as always. You are a kind man.
Not that early any more, almost half past 10 AM…
You have quite a few collapsed nodes there, so hard to say what is mixed together. Still a bit dim, that image. I assume it gets mixed with so many non-textured shader nodes that it gets watered down…
Thanks again,
Here is a blend file, maybe you can show me what you would do to make it ‘pop’ a bit. Also, once I have a node set the way I like is there a way to copy them all and only change the UV assigned to it. When i try to adjust a node set (like materials) any object using that node sets is affected by a change. Not the object opened.
Some minor remarks concerning your node setup:
a)
You don’t need two image texture nodes, if the image is the same: Just hook up that one image texture node to as many other nodes as you like.
b)
If you’re not exactly sure what any node contributes to the final look of the material, select that node and mit “M” to toggle it on or off (M for “mute”). That way you can see in the rendered viewport how the material changes. In your case the emission shader blows out almost anything else but the final glossy node it is mixed with, so I in fact deleted all other shader nodes.
Oh, and I think that mesh can make good use of a Edge Split modifier to not have weird smooth shading on flat surfaces.
Looks good, Thanks for the “M” tip to preview it was getting old cutting and reconnecting.
I am not familiar with Edge split is that the “i i” command in edit mode?
Also is there a way to save a group as a preset? To reuse throughout a model?
IGE: that star field is one of many, instead of re creating is there a quick way to grab all those nodes and adjust as desired without adjusting globally?
It will happen quite often that you have smooth (rounded) and flat areas on the same mesh and also sharp and smooth edges. But whenever you hit the smooth and flat shading buttons in the left-hand “T” panel, Blender will apply those shading modes on the entire mesh, which will result in flat areas looking weird because Blender tries to smooth the unsmoothable or - on the other hand - rounded areas appearing facetted with shading set to flat.
The Edge Split modifier splits edges within a mesh and - as a side effect - makes edges appear sharp when their angle is above a certain threshold. This more or less automatically takes care of the smooth/flat/rounded/sharp issue:
This is basically a cylindrical object with some cubical extensions. Smooth shading alone (right) looks plain weird and will also spoil the shading when rendering. With Edge Split (left) all is shiny.
Concerning node groups:
Select the nodes you want to re-use and hit Ctrl-G. You can now rename that node group to your liking and whenever you hit Shift-A to add new nodes, you will see a new “Group” category from which you can insert your custom node groups.
Or you just Ctrl-C (copy) and Ctrl-V (paste) the nodes to where you like.
Thanks a million Ikari… That modifier will sure help out. I had the EXACt issue with my overhead beams and that would have been the trick. Modifier>Edge Split
Select desired nodes and save them Via CTRL “G”. Will this make a preset or is that just per model? Or is there another way to make it a preference? Like creating Chrome once and it is a group node in any model?
Grateful and appreciated
NC
The “Multiply” is a Converter > Math node. In it’s dropdown menu you can choose which mathematical operation is it supposed to do (defaults to “Add”). The node changes it’s name accordingly.
As I said, the Edge Split modifier makes edges appear sharp when their angle is above a certain threshold: The Split Angle is that threshold (= Blender examines the angle between two adjacent faces in the mesh and decides if the edge between them is a sharp or smooth edge based on the threshold value).
IKari, Thanks appreciate you coming back over here and helping me out. Got it! Starting to shape up over here.
Regards
NC
P.S I saved my Node group as instructed used it again for another pic / image and it brings the other image with it (Fine) I switch out the image to the one desired. But it also changes the other first one to the new or second pic?
When using Shift +A to add Group This Image comes along. When I switch to desired pic for monitor 2 monitor 1 changes…It is Global. I have tried to save all but the Image Texture as a group but find I cannot connect my image to the group doing it that way
SO I tried to copy and paste all nodes but Image texture and assign it to the second monitor spot. Then add a texture image. I see it in the preview but it does not show up in the render view?
