general question / vray materials

[firewireflow]

hi everybody!

i try to teach myself vray right now and i got a couple of general questions concerning materials.

ok. so i read in the manual about the BRDF materials. its great! my question is if you guys would rather create one shader for one object or create multiple shaders and then activate the mix texture thingy? what is the usual way?

i try to create selfilluminating type letters. the should look a little grungy and dirty and the light shouldn't be equal over the whole object. it should have falloffs and so on.

i tried to play around the refraction and sss but i couldn't get to any nice result. so now i figured to create multiple shaders and layer them via mix texture. does that make sense?

here is what i got so far. no dirt maps are on there but will give yo an idea what i am aiming for.

http://www.florianherweg.com/xchange/test_01.jpg

any tips, recommendations and help is very appreciated!

thanks
flow

[firewireflow]

ok. i will document what i do for other beginners. that might help.

http://florianherweg.com/xchange/test_03.jpg

here i created one material that just got a yellow luminosity channel and a white specular layer.

on top of that i have a material with a red diffuse channel. i added a noise on the transparency of the diffuse channel. that masks most of the red out and it gives the letter a more organic lighting.

[firewireflow]

ok. i call it the day.

here's my last render:

http://www.florianherweg.com/xchange/test_09.jpg


and here's the scene file:

http://www.florianherweg.com/xchange/test_glow.zip


feedback in any kind is appreciated! i just want to know if this is a correct of doing things in vray.

thanks!
good night!
flow

[Matasorapit]

This style looks interesting.
When ever I create a play job with sss (for example skin) I have major problems with decent results of sss with vrays refraction settings. I have searched high and low but am still to find a decent result. Maybe this concept can aid me.

Cheers

[firewireflow]

thanks.

haven't worked on it lately. unfortunately i don't know if that is a smart way of doing it.

pro's out there! give us some mighty advise

best
flow