New! Advanced Gold Shader v1.1

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21

On the focused Critique site there are posted the rules of the road …

Remember this is the focused critique forum; people are expecting highly serious work for them to give serious feedback on.

2) Points of focus
If your posting here it means you are looking for criticism on your work, it helps if you already point out some things you’re questioning yourself. Make sure to include any information you can, such as blueprints, wireframe images, multiple renders, your ideas, concepts, experience, goals, inspiration, and timeline.

  1. Dealing with criticism
    When posting here people may attack your work with criticism. Sometimes, according to your opinion, they may be wrong. Keep in mind they are only trying to help you. If you can’t deal with criticism, don’t post here.

And that is only regarding serious Works in progress. When items are posted for sale, they deserve the same rigor of scrutiny. As to money going to the development fund, that shouldn’t simply get a pass. How about posting “how much” of a profit is being donated. A little transparency. That might help motivate buyers.
I’ve bought stuff simply because it was going towards important development.

And as to price, Price is always a consideration posted in any review in the world of any product. Book, DVD, car, plasma screen. So suddenly its a taboo subject? Wrong. The audience being targeted here is essentially a frugal crowd by necessity. But a pretty numerous bunch.

So those are my thoughts about champions of those too thin skinned. Like its gonna shut down development of Blender apps and plug-ins. NOT.

22

In a way, if it was blind public bashing then yes it would be rude, but it can become a different situation if you decide you’re going to write your opinion on what he can do to make a shader that could easily be seen as a premium product.

So you think the shader is simplistic or trivial and thus doesn’t fit the price, then write your opinion on what he can do to make it worth that amount.

23

Rename the plugin to “Precios Metals Shader” and add to it : Silver , Brass , Bronze , Gold , White Gold , Rose Gold , 18k Gold , 14 k Gold dirt maps to resemble unpolished Brass , Silver. And you can sell it for Shapeways users and other ones that use it.

As it is now , sux big time , due the fact : 1. to much numbers , people like straight forward approach , with simple as : color , IOR , dirt map / polish/unpolish.

The it can be usable! Like it is right now , i can do this shader in 2 minutes and my version looks better.

This is my constructive critique.

24

:eek:
I come back after 3 days, and… wow.

Oke, I’v sold thinks before and I’m kid of used to this kind of responds so he, I don’t mind critics. So don’t feel bad on my account.

  1. I read that some of you think I spent just 20 min and BOOM! posted it on Blender Market, well… nope!
    I’v spent days on v1.1,
    I went to jewelry stores, researched the light-path’s, etc.

  2. Yes, it does work in different environments and light setups

  3. As I stated at my submitted product on Blender Market, I will do updates, add features, work out bug’s. I charge $9.55 because I don’t think it’s fair that I have to keep raising the price with coming features [as I have seen others do this, but mind you, not on BA so far], updates are FREE, I will never change the price unless its REALLY necessary! [this only go’s for lowering the price, I will never raise it]

  4. no, I’m not planning to earn much with this, I aim for fairness and good pricing, I’m sorry to see not everyone is in agreement with me on this.

  5. I’m not one of those whana-be’s, I been working with blender for over 6 years, I know my way around blender, so I don’t post junk-for-a-buck, just for future reference.

Thanks,
I’m planning to expand the materials as stated before.

And thanks to you guys who stood in my defense, I much appreciate it, but I’m used to it.
I can understand the argument, I agree that some thinks look less than the are.

Well, I hope this clears up a few thing,
And again, please give me feedback.

Cheers,

Jim Morren

25

That’s actually a good idea pal, but I was thinking about this before, does this not add the “Overwhelming Options” down-side?
I’m just asking since, if you guys want me to add that amount of flexibility, (which I don’t mind giving) would this not make it hard to use, with tons of sliders. It would be a maze…

If you guys don’t mind the LONG LIST of sliders than… yeah, I’ll work on this.

Ones again thanks guys, your input is most valuable,

Cheers,

Jim Morren

26

I think you could draw the line between new applications/major updates and assets made for applications (like this).

27

journeyman,

Honestly, what’s really being talked out is almost, “A universal Metals shader”
Given that you’re discussing requests on how to wicker out how to do silver and colorization for Gold to mimic bronze, is is possible to do Steel, brushed metal, copper, bronze, etc? If so, Holy shit what an aid.

Right now, I’m totally reliant on image maps.

You’d crfeate for metal what the Arnold skin shader is doing for, well … skin.

That would be a helluva tool in the ditty bag.

28

I have stayed quiet about Blender Market since it’s launch, but I think I have to say something now. Although I wouldn’t pay for anything Blender related on the principal of Blender being open source freeware, and very capable too. If journeyman want to try and sell his shader for $10 a pop it’s up to him. I personally think if he want to make money out of something a whole team of people have spent over 10 years toiling over for free then good luck to him.
If the main software is free then lets keep the plugins / shaders free too, otherwise we may as well all move over to MAX or MAYA. I came from MAX and have to say although it was more powerful than Blender, I like Blender better because of its community and I respect the work of the developers.
I personally think the price is imaterial here, it’s the fact there is a price at all. Come on people lets not go down the WAREZ route because that is the way it seems to be heading now. Keep it free and respect the work others are putting in to kindly “GIVE” us this great software.
And I’m no wiz with Blender shaders, but really how hard can it be to make metal, just head over to Andrew Price’s tutorials he has some brilliant stuff there.

Rant over and good luck Journeyman, great TV series bty. LOL

Cheers, Wig

29

Just a thought, but Blender is opensource 3D software (tool), tool scripts are tools. Things created using Blender as a tool (models, textures, effects, shaders or shader configurations, renders, etc.) are creative works or “content.” While there is a valid debate about dependent script tools that use / rely on / access portions of Blender’s code or core functionality - it is my understanding that content created by an artist using Blender - is the property of said artist, who is free to distribute their content as they see fit.

In other words, the commercial or “for profit” use of Blender (as a content generation tool) is allowed under the licensing terms. As an analogy: If you use someone’s pencil (with permission of course & barring any other agreements) to write a poem, you (the creator) own the poem, not the person who provided the tool to write it down.

To say that because someone uses opensource tools they should not charge for their content - is ridiculous. Especially since commercial use is allowed under the license agreement. Obviously the inverse of such a statement would be that users of proprietary software must only charge for their content and that they should not be allowed to provide content free of charge.

Along similar lines, there are paid developers who work on Blender. Should they not be allowed to receive payment for their work, simply because Blender is opensource or “free”? The commercialization of Blender content is sure to be controversial, not everyone is going to like it. But we should respect the right of content authors and developers - provided they are within the confines of the license and the law.

Keep in mind, opensource software is “free” but that does not mean “free lunch” rather it means something along the lines of “freedom from / to / of.”

Also, +1 to the idea of a Blender Market sub forum.

-Frank.

30

Yes, but it’s not worth it. By the time you have “one covers all” you’ve also introduced unwanted complexity. Not to mention all the possible things you could add that was never thought about. Oxidation/rust i.e., is this something you want as a built-in to the shader? Add procedural bumps/roughness and scratchmaps and you’ll hate the time it takes to compute. What about paint and clearcoat? Or dust creating a sheen? Or various alloy compositions? It can just get crazy complex if you want to, and end up with something unusable in the end (as many, including my own, “uber/multi shader” approaches).

That’s often a better approach. Remember, what he’s selling is a “gold shader” not all kinds of gold materials.

The problem here is that there is no good way of creating an all purpose metal that is both efficient enough and complex enough to actually demand money for. You can’t say that stainless steel have that particular color, as it varies with alloy composition, production method, heat and chemical treatment and so on. As for brushed metal, what belt sizes and roughness values would be good? And you can’t get away from a good prepping of the object (unless all you want is a simple kitchen pan :p).

All that said against multi purpose shaders, I’m all for task oriented ones as startup shader types - set quick and approx values in MP shader, then recreate from scratch/template until you have the controls you need and an acceptable result. But the base has to be readable, there is no point in exposing too much control to the user (he’ll find it if he needs it).

But, I’m with Wig42 on this one, I would never pay for something as “simple” as a combination of builtin nodes, even some of the objects in there makes me go “what…?”. The only reason I currently “stick” with Blender is because it’s free, and assets have been free. Maybe I should have gone Modo after all, which was the advice I was given (better suited for my modelling sw).

Back on track… (Sorry)…

Have anyone tested this “gold shader”? Does it really have some uniqueness to its node setup that would be hard to figure out ourselves (don’t show, I can make my own gold :D)? Almost all metals is can be made from the following shader setup: Anisotropic shader (valid from v2.72 I guess) -> Material output. That’s it. Diffuse and (real) IOR can be ignored. Adjust color and parameters, and you have the most basic of the version you want. Adjusting and adding to that, you’re not trying to create a certain material anymore, but a materials specific appearance, composition, treatment, production method, or surface finish.

And, lastly… “researched the light-path’s”… What does that even mean? Not trying to mock anyone here, but I feel something as “simple” (by my understanding) as gold, is something that could have existed in the Cycles Materials thread (has some pretty advanced setups for various stuff), now providing earnings for others. What makes this gold so special that it would be worth (for someone else) to actually pay for it?

31

I’m a bit offended that you seem to hope that no one makes any profit from this, but I assume that’s just a hurried reply and not really thought out. That, or you’re one of them FOSS nazis :wink:

I don’t know about you guys, but $300 per month of passive income seems pretty good to me (29 copies of Gaffer have been sold, of the $15 I get about $10). Keep in mind that coding Gaffer wasn’t my full time job. It was done on the side, in my spare time, for my own benefit.

Personally, I hate advertising. It boiled my blood to spam you good folks and invade your personal space in the hope of getting a few sales, but if I hadn’t, I’m sure it’d be sitting deep down in the forgotten depths of the All products page, and I’d be pretty depressed that no one else sees the benefit of all my hard work like I do. If you don’t believe me, take a look at the Node Wrangler for example - a free add-on Bartek and I have spent countless hours on, which I think is even more useful than Gaffer and yet I’ve never seen anyone else use it.

I wont be buying this shader because I believe that, given the need, I could do my own research and make one myself that’s specific to the situation I need it for, and I know that some of you have the same reason. But others may not have the knowledge required to make a nice gold/metal shader. Heck, some people think you can just download an image from CGTextures, slap it on a diffuse/glossy shader and that’s it. And if you think all you need is an anisotropic shader, then by all means use that - no one will bash you about it unless you try to force them to think it’s realistic.

I’m glad Journeyman has a thick skin.

32

The blender developers do not work for free. They get paid. The best way to show respect for the developers is to donate monthly. In fact, they aren’t “giving” us free software. We the users, donate money to the Blender Foundation, which then gets allocated to developers so they can get paid for their time. So in essence its the donators that are giving everyone else this great software.

No donations = no money
no money = no developers
no developers = no blender.

Also, this thread should be moved out of the News Section