Leaves Geo

[Anonymous]

Enabling thin wall leaves only weight and type of sss available in the sss options what is the realistic way of creating a leaf with geometry.

[madsd · Accepted solution]

Im in the process of writing a master vegetation shader control system.
In short:

you need 1 bitmap, the photo.
From that we can derive and automatically produce masks and control versions of this bitmap directly in a single OSL shader we source out the numberous closure hooks.

Diffuse, Albedo, Normals, Specular roughness, AO, SSS controllers, bump, displacement, cavity are just some of the components this map can produce.
Using 2 sided normal check so we can shade each side independantly and so on.

Ill make a post about it when its ready.

With that said, the general idea is that you fabricate control masks for all aspects of the leaf effect. thin translucency ( and plugging a variant of the diffuse map in is not correct ), normals greatly effect specular and general leaf details, so important to have that generated first. If the leaf has some curvature use a facing ratio node to blend in different albedo values and so on.

Ive seen a couple of leaf shading attempts but they all super basic, so thats why I decieded to write a global standard shader. Less fiddle more for the money.

[Anonymous]

Ohh nice.....here's a leaf shading attempt that's not that basic tho https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g3HqAvcyBIE

[madsd]

Still, it's a ton of nodes, a lot of fiddling to set it up, some aspects not covered or incomplete.
youll be working with the final aspects almoste instantly with my OSL shader as a comparison.


Lets try compare the compactness and user friendlyness between noodle chaos and a single shader doing the exact same thing.
There is no chance the noodle can rival a single map on so many levels.

[madsd]

We have modes in a single map as well.
Wet, dry, beat up, autumn, grime, torn. Procedurally generated additional effects directly in the shader, automatically distributed to all channels.

Things like adding additional holes and make the edges of the holes more brown in it, when the leaf starts to decompose around the new procedurally generated mask

Drop down, and the shader automatically populates a new configuration array to whatever slot you pipe to the material.
That would take a TON of time to do on a generic legacy noodle without wiring everything up to some integer ( even more noodle chaos )

[madsd]

So and when you then generate those procedural holes with the brown edges, you also need to change normal contribution along with SSS feed and specular component on the decayed area around the hole.


With a single map, grandma can step in and jazz up the leaf with nice holes, no need for a doctor degree in masking dependencies.

[Anonymous]

That's pretty Rad....when do you think it will it be available.