materials thread

Hey jan1 , thanks a lot for your post. This may be something to consider for us, but if you generally have any specific questions regarding SketchUp materials, always kindly let me know and if you haven't already, check out our dedicated SketchUp materials knowledgebase article here!

Yea!! I would like to know how to create velvet materials in Enscape. I tried and looks like leather!!

Hey rodhent , thanks for your reply!

It really depends on the kind of velvet you'd like to create, but this what I've achieved in a short manner of timer:

Here are the corresponding Enscape Materials settings, the velvet picture used as bump can be found attached to this thread as well:

Feel free to play around with the sliders/settings accordingly to setup your own velvet material to fit your preferences! Also, when hovering over the little "?" symbols to the right, you'll get a short description detailing what they're used for.

Quote from jan1

guys

i really strugle to make good curtain material /curtains with no paterns/

Sorry to hear about that. I don't know which material settings you've tried before, but have a look at my take:

Everything can be adjusted to fit your preferences of course, but I hope that you can use this as a point of reference!

I've found the foliage setting works really well for a sheer curtain.

Quote from andybot

I've found the foliage setting works really well for a sheer curtain.

Yeah, if the curtains don't have to be transparent, setting the material type to "Foliage" will actually add subsurface scattering, which makes sense for curtains!

jan1 , thanks for the feedback; could you kindly send me a screenshot of that behavior for me to check out?

Hello, I am struggling with making sheer curtain with foliage material. It used to work really well in previous versions of Enscape. Now I get very dark results whenever the opacity dips below 70%. I have had to use a map to drive opacity instead but doing so manifests a very noisy texture. Anyone know a good setting for curtain?

I encountered the same problem and I ended up using a fabric bump texture for transparency (In the latest v3 of Enscape.) That seems to work ok for sheer curtains using a regular material (not foliage - no transparency setting available)

Thank you Andy. I had been using a mid-gray texture @3840 pixels as cutout transparency which gave noisy linen like result. It was not my intention. I recall trying an actual texture as well in the past. I will give it a try again. Do you think the resolution of the texture matters?

I wish Enscape will take further their development of material shaders for fabric, and other sub-scattering type materials.

Unfortunately, it seems that any cutout texture gives a noisy result, regardless of the smoothness or scale. It appears one has to render at a higher resolution and then down-sample to get a smoother render result. The transmittance option for transparency is glass-like, and doesn't work at all for curtains. I would like to see a way for the material to be smoother natively as well.

Right. I've noticed seasoned Enscape users are masters of these work-arounds. I wonder, if it is more importantly a render quality issue.; Enscape not exposing any of render quality parameters for end user in favor of ease of use and for faster render times.

Quote from amendoim

Right. I've noticed seasoned Enscape users are masters of these work-arounds. I wonder, if it is more importantly a render quality issue.; Enscape not exposing any of render quality parameters for end user in favor of ease of use and for faster render times.

I think we'll hear the same response, that Enscape was build specifically for ease of use. But it's mature enough now that more advanced users are using it and is more widely used that some more "advanced" features are sorely needed to be integrated. Particularly as the competition heats up in the real-time space. The same can be said about SketchUp. Where is used to be something to play with is now pretty well-known in the architecture world, professionally. I wouldn't be afraid at all anymore to say I model with SketchUp. Actually, most of the time I hear "you did THAT using SketchUp?!". And I explain what Enscape has done for my workflow.

Quote from andybot

Unfortunately, it seems that any cutout texture gives a noisy result, regardless of the smoothness or scale. It appears one has to render at a higher resolution and then down-sample to get a smoother render result. The transmittance option for transparency is glass-like, and doesn't work at all for curtains. I would like to see a way for the material to be smoother natively as well.

I personally struggle with light fixture lenses "glowing" without simply adding emissive color or something. I agree with you that "Foliage" and Transmittance/cutout (or a mix of both?) can look unusably grainy, so I just slap an emissive material on it and be done with it.

This light fixture lens has eluded me for some time. It's a typical light I uses in nearly all my projects (grocery stores).

Thanks Tim for your input. Yes, all translucent material is a struggle. See these noisy light diffusers: very very bad! More importantly, there is some weird threshold with Opacity around 60 when everything just turns black, and one has to play with the roughness to prevent that. But what if I wanted these glass to be smooth and glossy, which I had setout to do but that is not possible. I agree Enscape badly needs better material shader solution for sub-surface scattering, two sided material. The foliage material as it is, is not completely functional. I had looked at Enscape's roadmaps for future development, I am a little surprised that they have not prioritized advancing material shader development, especially now that they have combined with Chaos group and possibly have at their disposal for getting ahead in this aspect. Enscape, please develop advanced materials and expose more parameters for user control.