Many Truelight materials used in VRED share properties.
The effect of the object itself giving off light. Incandescence is useful in various cases where an object needs to be lit without the use of a full light object in the scene. Settings are available for the object to affect the lighting of only itself or the surrounding scene.
The strength of the effect (Range -0-1000).
The color of the light rays.
Enables the use of a texture to control the intensity of the effect according to the texture values.
If this option is selected for multiple texture slots of a material, their texture mapping settings are linked together. When changing, for example, the Repeat UV of a linked texture, it is changed for all linked textures at once. When selecting this option for a texture while other textures of that material already have the link option selected, the texture settings are set to the settings of the already linked textures.
Depending on the type of material, the setting options can vary. For common materials light Plastic and Phong, there are now three mapping types selectable for the using textures:
Sets the mapping type of the texture. There are three modes which can be selected.
Sets the repeat mode of the texture. There are four modes:
Repeats the texture in all directions.
Repeats and mirrors the texture on the x- And y- Axis with every repetition.
The texture is not repeated.
Repeats only the last pixel of the texture.
Sets the number of repetitions for the UVs.
Sets the offset for the UVs.
Rotates the UVs.
Coordinates (x, y, z) of the projection center can be set here.
Offers the possibility to incline the projection plane.
Sets the size of the projection. Textures default to infinite projection depth and cover the entire object. You can restrict the texture to one side of the object by limiting the range of the projection. Changing the Z value of the projection size from zero (infinite) to another value achieves the restriction.
If selected, the size corresponding to the original aspect ratio of the texture is automatically adjusted.
Sets the projection plane’s rotation on the X/Y/Z- Axis.
Adjusts the texture on the selected object. Hold the Shift key and drag on the manipulator to rotate, scale, or translate the texture. Dragging the blue scale control adjusts the depth limit of the texture.
Adjusts the size of the projection plane to the selected object.
Adjusts the projection center to the center of the selected object.
Defines the textures size on the X-/Y- Axis.
Set the repetition value of the U and V- Axis for each projection direction.
Set the offset value of the U and V- Axis for each projection direction.
Sets the projection orientation.
Applies the texture to the selected surface.
Sets the texture filter quality for the image texture. Value 1 is lowest quality. Value 16 is highest quality.
Enables evaluation of ray lights on the surface. This is used to be able to look into a ray file light and to make it visible in reflections and refractions. The origins of the rays should be on the surface to be evaluated.
Uses the material as a light source for other materials in the scene while raytracing.
Allows the incandescence light shadow materials. Set the Reflection Mode of the shadow material to Diffuse, Glossy, or Diffuse + Glossy.
Allows other objects to cast shadows on the shadow material due to the material's incandescence illumination.
Sets the intensity of shadows cast by the geometry light.
If Use As Light Source is selected, objects with this material function as geometric light sources. A value higher than one increases the probability that the light source emits photons at the photon mapping. This is useful for dark light sources in an interior if incident light comes from outside Environments.
Controls the illumination and sets the light sampling quality during interactive/still frame rendering.
Define the shader’s opacity.
Renders the shader transparent.
Inverts the texture.
The Texture, Repeat, Offset, Rotate, and Anisotropy settings are described in the General Truelight Material Settings - Incandescence section.
Subsurface Scattering Video Captions: In VRED 2021, we have now improved the way we are calculating subsurface scattering. The new algorithm is a brute force volume-scattering algorithm. This is very helpful for materials like translucent plastics, marble, skin, or leaves. In the material setting of a plastic, you can enable the volume scattering, and choose between two types. Below, you will find all necessary settings for achieving different subsurface scattering looks. This new feature gives you the possibility to get a more realistic and physically correct look and behavior of your materials. Thanks for watching the video.
Translucency and subsurface scattering are two different methods for calculating light passing through the back of an object into the observer's eye. While translucency requires far less calculation power, subsurface scattering offers more possibilities and greater flexibility.
Subsurface scattering simulates the effect of light entering an object and scattering beneath its surface. Use this for the realistic rendering of materials, such as translucent plastic, marble, skin, leaves, wax, and milk. With these types of materials, not all light reflects from a surface. Some of it will penetrate below the surface of an illuminated object. There, it will be absorbed by the material and scattered internally. Some of this scattered light will make its way back out of the surface and become visible to the camera.
There are two modes when operating with translucency, depending on what objects to project:
Disables subsurface scattering.
Simulates translucency on single-sided objects, so the subsurface is rendered as a translucent object being lit from behind. Use for thin-sided objects, such as bubbles, thin cloth, thin leaves, lamp shades, or sheet of paper lit from behind.
It requires more calculation time than the solid translucency mode, but when in doubt, use this mode.
Simulates light scattered by a thin, uniform atmosphere. This produces shafts of light and volumetric shadows cast from geometric objects. Use it for fog or smoke. It works with point, spot, area, rectangular, spherical, disc, and directional lights, but not with ray.
Determines the color of the scattering/translucent light.
Defines the amount of diffusion that is applied to translucent light.
Incoming light on the averted side of an object is refracted in all directions. With this mode, it is possible to simulate the behavior of wax or other translucent materials. There are two modes available:
Allows light to bounce once inside a material before it is reflected to the outside. This mode is less accurate but requires less calculation time than multiple scattering.
Allows light to bounce several times inside a material before it is reflected to the outside. This mode is more accurate, but requires more calculation time than single scattering.
The distance that the light travels inside the medium is dependent on the attenuation value. The higher the value, the more light is absorbed inside the medium.
This value describes the directional characteristic of incoming light, and its weighted behavior. For a value of -1, the light is distributed to the averted side along the incoming light path. FOr a value of 1, the light is distributed along the incoming light path. A value of 0 describes a homogeneous distribution of light inside the medium.
Offers a large selection of refraction indices, based on materials existing in reality. The selected medium affects the Index of Refraction, automatically.
Defines the optical density, and therefore, the way light is refracted when passing through differently dense materials.
The Texture, Repeat, Offset, Rotate, and Anisotropy settings are described in the Incandescence section.
Displacement maps are detailed maps, which are interpreted as height information. Floating point displacement maps may encode displacements in both positive and negative directions using real world values. Using displacement maps you can create highly detailed structures from simple geometry by using a plain image. Each point on the geometry is displaced along the interpolated vertex normals using the height information of the map, resulting in a realistic silhouette, producing correct shadows, and reflections. Accuracy is limited by the resolution of the texture image and memory requirements are low. To avoid cracks in the displaced surfaces the vertex normals should be smooth and consistent. Using a higher tessellated base mesh can improve performance.
Defines the scaling factor of values for the displacement.
Defines the offset of the displacement. Allows you to set the value of the zero plane in the texture. Values below the zero plane displace inside the geometry and values above the zero plane displace outside the geometry.
This feature allows you to calculate the displacement in OpenGL like in raytracing mode. Selecting it may drastically reduce the performance.
Loads an image texture for the diffuse color channel. Uses the image as pattern on the surfaces.
If this option is selected for multiple texture slots of a material, their texture mapping settings are linked together. When changing, for example, the Repeat UV of the linked texture, it is changed for all linked textures at once. When selecting this option for a texture while other textures of that material already have the link option selected, the texture settings are set to the settings of the already linked textures.
Select the type of mapping, either Planar, or UV.
Sets the repeat mode of the texture. There are four modes:
Repeats the texture in all directions.
Repeats and mirrors the texture on the x- and y-axis with every repetition.
The texture is not repeated.
Repeats only the last pixel of the texture.
You can set the following parameters:
Sets the number of repetitions for the UVs.
Sets the offset for the UVs.
Rotates the UVs.
You can set the following parameters:
Coordinates (x, y, z) of the projection plane’s center can be set here.
Offers the possibility to incline the projection plane.
Sets the size of the projection.
If checked, the size corresponding to the original aspect ratio of the texture, is automatically adjusted.
Sets the projection plane’s rotation on the X/Y/Z-axis.
Applies the texture to the selected surface.
Adjusts the size of the projection plane to the selected object.
Adjusts the projection center to the center of the selected object.
These settings take effect in Raytracing rendering mode only.
Sets the ID of the material in a range of [0, 31].
Defines the radius of the tube when the shader is applied to a line geometry.
If selected, diffuse and glossy reflections are calculated from the environment that is assigned to this material in all illumination modes. Specular reflections are determined by the environment that is present in the scene.
Selecting this option does not include the light values of a photon map when calculating the illumination of a pixel.
If selected, the setting overrides the global set illumination modes for interactive or still frame rendering.
Sets the render quality mode and render quality level during Render View interaction/still frame rendering.
This mode does not compute direct reflection, nor does it compute refraction or any other sophisticated visual effect.
Precomputed + Reflections - This mode is comparable to VRED OpenGL rendering mode. It uses precomputed Ambient Occlusion and indirect illumination for rendering and calculates specular reflections, refractions, and correct shadows from light sources.
Precomputed + Shadows - This mode uses precomputed image-based lighting and indirect illumination but doesn’t use precomputed Ambient Occlusion values. Instead it calculates shadows based on the active environment.
Precomputed + IBL - This mode uses precomputed indirect illumination and samples the environment.
Full Global Illumination - The Full Global Illumination Mode doesn’t use any precomputed values but accurately samples everything in a physically based approach. Other features like Photon Mapping require the render mode to be set to Full Global Illumination.
If selected, the setting overrides the global IBL Sampling quality for sampling the environment map.
Sets the IBL sampling quality during interactive/still-frame rendering.
If enabled, the setting overrides the global sampling quality for reflections/refractions.
Sets the reflection/refraction sampling quality during interactive/still-frame rendering.
If selected, the setting overrides the global set illumination modes for interactive or still-frame rendering.
Sets the Trace Depth during interactive/still frame rendering.
The common settings define material settings that are present in all BRDF materials.
Sets the shader’s pre-calculated ambient occlusion color.
Sets the shader’s pre-calculated ambient occlusion intensity
Compresses all used textures to save disk space and helps to reduce memory requirements in large scenes.
Enables materials to be sorted into groups based on the key that controls the order of the drawing transparent surfaces.
Right-clicking opens a context menu to select an HDR image for the light source.
The HDR image of the assigned environment is used for diffuse, glossy, and specular reflections on this material in OpenGL rendering. Different materials can have different environments assigned to get different lighting effects.
In Raytracing, the handling of the environment depends on the active illumination mode.
Defines the light model to be used for the shader. There are five different lighting models.
The shader is affected by the HDR-Image, by the pre-calculated or interactive Global Illumination rendering and by the direct light sources placed in the scene.
The shader is affected by the HDR-Image and by the pre-calculated or interactive Global Illumination rendering.
The shader is affected by the HDR-Image and the direct light sources placed in the scene.
Only the HDR-Image affects the shader.
Only direct light sources placed in the scene affect the shader.
This is an OpenGL-specific rendering feature.
Set the shading rate per material, such as coarse 2x2 or supersampling 4x. Use variable rate shading to vary the amount of processing power required for different parts of an image. The pixels where the user is looking are rendered at a higher resolution than anything in their periphery, saving processer power. Variable rate shading also provides a smoother VR experiences.
For materials with fine patterns that are prone to the moiré effect, such as carbon or HMI textures with thin lines that appear aliased, use a supersampling shading rate. If you are looking for better performance, use the coarse shading rates, which has no other purpose than that. Both of these can be used in VR and desktop mode.
E.g., all materials are rendered "normally" with the native shading rate (1 sample per pixel), but the carbon material should be rendered with supersampling (4 samples per pixel).
When using foveated rendering at the same time, the material is always rendered with its custom shading rate. For example, the carbon material is rendered with 4 samples on the whole screen, as well as in the periphery of the foveated area.
Disables variable rate shading.
Enables variable rate shading for normal pixel shading, but no visual difference to VRS off.
Enables variable rate shading for coarse pixel shading with 1 sample per 4 pixel.
Enables variable rate shading for coarse pixel shading with 1 sample per 16 pixel.
Enables variable rate shading for supersampled pixel shading with 2 samples per pixel.
Enables variable rate shading for supersampled pixel shading with 4 samples per pixel.
Enables variable rate shading for supersampled pixel shading with 8 samples per pixel.