I’m trying to do Chapter 2 from the “Mastering Blender” book but I’ve hit a road block the intended final material is meant to be very bright, but mine is dull and orange.
Diffuse and Specular and Emission settings for all nodes AFAIK are correct, all texture settings are correct; but the “Clouds” texture the provided blend has has much higher contrast but it’s “Contrast” setting is the same as mine, both are 1.
Basically I want the final “brightness” of my material’s lava to match with the intended result from the tutorial blend file and I have no idea what I’m doing wrong.
The problem is specifically the “Clouds” texture you can choose when you create a new texture. Mine is “lighter” than the one in the original file. Mine is BlenderTutotorial.blend the one from the book is lava.blend
I have edited the picture and circled in red the problem area, I cannot find any material or texture settings that are different between my file and theirs that affects this.
In fact if I repeat the process in the lava.blend file I get the exact same “Clouds” texture they have; but mine are far lighter, I feel like there has to be some other setting.
Hello Tai, unfortunately I cannot see what exactly you want me to see; additionally you appear to be selecting the “Rock” node which isn’t the node I am currently having difficulty with, it’s the lava node that right now is posing the largest difficulty.
Also my blend file (BlenderTutorial.blend) IS going to be slightly different because I was trying out different things to see if I could get an identical scene; the main difference I have identified is the “Clouds” texture, which is different for no reason that I currently know; if you know what is causing this can you please explain?
You did not copy the settings exactly… In the Lava material, both color fields of the Mix material node need to be pure white (1/1/1), while in your case the “Color” is more like a light grey.
That made things better! But there’s still the issue that there’s still some major differences in the final look (I’ve also disabled all the lighting in both scenes just to make sure) which I still think comes down to the Cloud textures being different; it has to have an effect I’m sure.
It’s weird (to me) because in the book provided blend file it defaults to that deeply dark contrast while in my it’s super light in comparison.
As Taipan already pointed out, there are quite a few deviations in your file from the tutorial settings: A slightly darker color here, a smaller Nabla there, a minor difference in a RGB Curve… And while most of those seem subtle, the combination results in quite a difference for the final look.
I have a feeling you might find that the Cloud texture issue is a wrong track. After adjusting many of the small things in your file I hardly see a difference to the tutorial file at all - and I didn’t even toucht the textures.
I went and pretty sure now every setting should be exactly the same; its close but the original blend has a much deeper shade of orange.
Mainly though lemme put it this way; I want to know why the book blend file has a much deeper contrast; there’s no explanation why this is the case, even if it doesn’t have anything to do why mine isn’t as orange as theirs; it’s still something that isn’t explained.
Left is the tutorial lava ball, right is your last attempt:
So, actually it’s your material which is more orange…?
And that’s because you still did not adjust all colors as in the tutorial file… See how your orange (right node) is much redder than the tutorial’s (left)?
Also: Your Rock material is significantly “blacker” than the one from the tutorial and the RGB curve that you use as a mixing factor is still different (in all pairs left = tutorial / right = you):
Especially the curve is of paramount importance, as minor deviations can have major effects.
Well, perhaps that tutorial file is so old that it pre-dates Blender’s current color correction paradigm. All I can say is that with all color and curve values truly equal, the render result is as well (miniscule variations from the viewing angle / relative light positions):
And that’s why you should ALWAYS use the Blender version used in the tutorial…
My version of Blender is 2.77a, what’s yours? Because if mine is super new, and the tutorial file is made in one super old; it doesn’t explain how you’re seeing differences though.
Right now I’m trying to figure out how to merge the two scenes.
I think it does. Current Blender versions (mine is 2.78a, btw) use color management.
If the original tutorial scene is pre-2.64 (when color management was introduced, IIRC), appending a material from one .blend into the respective other file might result in the color differences seen here.
But how the hell do I know. For me this is a satisfactory explanation and using the same color values results in identical materials, so…
I’m not saying your wrong, in fact you are very likely right and I appreciate your help. I’m just the sort of person that sees something being different and I’m like, “I gotta figure this out in case it becomes important later on!”
And yes it seems like there’s a visible difference when I append; some other things get kinda strange but it seems it’s the solution.
