The nodal surfaces in LightWave are pretty neat and allow for some complex surfaces to be made. Surfacing like this is still quite new to me so I am going to start documenting the node set up for some surfaces here on this page. There probably will not be too many surfaces here (not enough time for 3D!) but I will add to it from time to time.
Here is a set up for Ambient Occlusion that can be mixed with a user specified diffuse texture:
Node | Purpose |
---|---|
Scalar - Base Diffuse | Base diffuse value for the surface |
Scalar Layer - Diffuse Texture | Texture layer to control the diffuse value for the surface; layer opacity blends with the base diffuse value exactly like the old Layers based surfacing. |
Occlusion | Ambient occlusion node that calculates the occlusion for the surface geometry. |
Scalar - W | Weight of the ambient occlusion effect. This has range [0,1]. When W = 1, then the ambient occlusion effect is strongest. |
Subtract(1) | Performs (1 - W) |
Multiply(2) | W * Occlusion |
Add(2) | W * Occlusion + (1 - W) |
Multiply(1) | Produces final diffuse value: [W * Occlusion + (1 - W)] * (Diffuse Texture Layer) |
The effect of W is to set a minimum value (1 - W) that the ambient occlusion produces. Thus, the larger the weight W, the larger the effect of the ambient occlusion. Changing the weight W allows control of the ambient occlusion amount. Note that it seems that all the scalars output values between [0,1].
For the compact fluorescent elight bulb modeling tutorial, I investigated using the subsurface scattering (SSS) node for making the light bulb tube translucent:
I found out that the SSS node does not work very well with point or distant lights. I set up the scene with a few area lights, at least one of which is behind the object for a subtle translucency effect:
Here is the nodes setup:
Settings for each node:
I mixed both Lambertian and SSS nodes for the diffuse shading. Scale(1) is set to 50% and Scale(2) is set to 100%. This controls the relative mixing of the two surface types.