Procedural Texturing in Maya and V-Ray

In this lesson we will be creating the shading for the nucleus. So let's go ahead and open the hypershade so we can start working on the shader. So we can use the entire real estate of the screen. I'm going to go ahead and move the mouse over to the work area and press space, just to expand the hypershade, because we're not going to be needing the viewport now to work on the shader. For the nucleus shading, I'm going to be using V-Ray material. So from the list here, just press on V-Ray material. I'm going to go ahead and rename this shader. So hold CTRL and double-click on the name. And I'm going to name this Nucleus Base Color. If you double-click on the shader, you're going to see that the attribute editor opens, and here we can see the parameters of the shader. For the diffuse color, I'm going to be using a simple 2D ramp. So let's link that ramp into the diffuse color. Click on the small checker next to the diffuse color slider. This will open up the Create Render Node. And from the list select Ramp. This will link the ramp into the diffuse color. So for the nucleus color I'm going for a blueish purple color. So for the top color I'm going to be choosing a purple color, a more saturated purple color. For the second color I'm going to be using a darker blue, and for the last color I'm going to be using a light blue, something like this. Again, feel free to use any colors that you think will fit your project. I'm going to make this a bit darker. So if we select the swatch now and press F, this is this is how the nucleus will look now. And this is not the look that I'm going for. What I want is I need the purple color to be facing us, or facing the camera, all the time. So to do that, I'm going to use a node called Sampler Info. And Sampler Info, we can find that under the Utilities tab, and if we scroll down we'll find it here. Usually, the Sampler Info Node is usually used to create a Fresnel effect for reflection, in Mental Ray and Maya software, and V-Ray. But it has a lot of thought of uses, so we can use the Sampler Info to get a nice soft feel for a cloth material, or here we can use it just to add an effect of a hollow middle of the nucleus or something that's sitting inside of it. So to do that, I'm going to go ahead and link the Sampler Info to the ramp. So middle-click and drag the Sampler Info over the ramp. But before we do that, I'm going to just go ahead and rename the ramp. So hold CTRL, double-click on the ramp, and rename this Nucleus Color Ramp. We're going to be using a lot of ramps in creating this shader, so I really want to keep things really organized, because if we're going to go ahead and tweak some stuff, it's going to be really easy to know which element, which ramps, we have to change. So again, middle-click and drag the Sampler Info over to the ramp, and from the dropdown menu, select Other. This will open up the Connection Editor. And on the left side you're going to see we have the Sampler Info, and on the right side we have the nucleus color ramp. This is why naming conventions is really important, because this way we know exactly which Sampler Info is linking to which color ramp. So from the left area we're going to go and select Facing Ratio, and from the right side just click on the small plus sign to expand the UV Coord, and press both U and V. Now just hit close. As you can see, if you look at this, just press F2 to focus on the swatch, you'll see that the purple color, which is the top color here, is facing us. So here, if you go ahead and just for the sake of this example go ahead and add a new color here-- let's add something which stands out-- you see that this is going to be facing us. So let's go ahead and add this to the nucleus so you can see this example better. For now I'm going to go ahead and select Cell Membrane and just hide that, because we will deal with this when we finish the nucleus. So just select the Cell Membrane and go into the Child box and select, and then in the visibility slot, just type zero. This will hide it. So now select the nucleus, right-click on the shader and assign material to selection. For this course we will be using V-Ray to render the scene. So just make sure that under the render setting you have V-Ray selected. And in case V-Ray is not appearing in this list, just make sure it's activated. Go to Window, Setting Preferences, Plug-in Manager. And if you scroll down, you'll see that V-Ray from my bundle. Just make sure Loaded is checked, and if you want to check Auto load as well. So I'm going to leave these settings now at the default, because we're going to deal with this further down the road. So, now, so we can do a test render, select the nucleus and press F so we can focus on it. I'm just going to zoom in a bit. And now if we do a render, this is what we get, what we're going to get. So this is the purple, the main color. This is the darker blue. And this is the lighter blue. So this gives us an effect of, there is something, there's like a thickness to this nucleus, or there's something sitting inside of it. So now if we go ahead and rotate the camera to another angle, you're going to see, if we do a render we're going to see that it's going to give us the same effect. So this is why the Facing Ratio, this is where the Facing Ratio comes in really, really handy. So now the purple is always going to be facing the camera. So now let's make this ramp more interesting. Into the ramp, into the nucleus color ramp, I'm going to go ahead and create another ramp, which we're going to link into the color slot, into the purple color slot. So from that, we're going to create a new ramp. So go ahead, under 2D Textures, select Ramp. I'm going to go ahead and name this ramp Vines, just so we can keep things really clean. For this ramp I'm going to be adding multiple colors, and a lot of different positions for the colors. Before we start adding that, just make sure the interpolation is set, instead of Linear, to None. So what None does is, you see, we don't have any more falloff between the colors, so you see Linear has a nice green falloff between the colors. But I'm more looking for a more solid color look to create pretty lines of vines. So, here, the colors that I'm going to be using. I'm going to start with the same purple that we used before. For the second color I'm going to be using more of a pink color. And this one, this purple, maybe I'll even use a darker purple for this one. Again, feel free to use whatever color works best for your project. You don't have to use the exact same colors that I'm using. I'm just going for a specific look for this one. So this is why I'm using these colors. Again, you can, if you want to repeat a color, just drag the code from that color down. You see this will duplicate the color. Again, I'm going to use this same pink again. Another. So now just go ahead and tweak these colors. You can add as many colors as you want, just to suit which suits the look you're going for. Feel free to experiment with this one and create and add as many colors and multiple positions and sizes and so on. All right, so let's tweak these a bit so we get a nice variation here. I don't want you saying, This doesn't look anything like vines. So we're going to go ahead and add some waviness to this ramp. So before I do that, just make sure, before you add any wave to the ramp, just make sure to check out which type of ramp you have selected. Because if you have a V ramp type selected on top, make sure you play with the V-wave and not the U-wave, because if you have a V ramp and you go ahead and move the U-wave slide, nothing will happen. For this example I'm going to use a U ramp, and just go ahead and move the U-wave to add some waviness to it. But I'm going for more of an organic look, and this doesn't look organic at all. So to fix that, I'm going to add some noise. See, this adds a nice effect, a nice organic look to it. Again, make sure to tweak these to the look you're going for. Now go back to the Nucleus Color Ramp that we created, and select the first color, the purple color, and now middle-click you can drag the Vines ramp over the selected color. This will override the purple color, so no matter what the color of this one is, now we will see it will render the color that is inside this ramp. So now let's go ahead and do a render and see how that looks. All right. I'm sorry, I think I have-- just make sure you don't have Render Selected Objects Only. See, this way you have to have an object selected so it renders it. So uncheck this one, and just do a render again. So you see, this is the effect that we get when we add that ramp to those vines effects to it. So now, again, if we rotate this and we do another render, the beauty of procedural texture is that from each angle we're going to get something else. So this is why procedural texture is really, really good and really interesting, and really powerful. And feel free to go ahead and tweak this, and maybe make these vines a bit thinner, if you think they're too thick, and add any other colors you think. Maybe I'll add a hot red to it, just to get a nice line to it. And now we do a render. See, this is the red we just added. So feel free to experiment with this and add as many colors as you want. In the next lesson, we will create a bump map for the nucleus base color, and we will add some reflections and specular highlights to the shader.