Cineversity

Good morning Dr. S!

I’m wondering if you could give some advice on stacking materials and Redshift. I created a bumpy texture using a noise, a ramp and a displacement. And in the main color node it’s just pink.

All I want is to add another “layer”/material with some art in it (whether it’s created from another Noise, or some photoshop art with an alpha channel) to overlay the bumpy pink material. 

I’ve been trying to figure this out all day, I’ve watched tons of tutorials on it. I guess I’m not so smart. I know you have to use a material blender, but I can’t figure out how. I know it’s something to do with the black and white settings in the material blender. Is there some good clear tutorial you know of on this, or could you perhaps point me in the right direction?

I really really need to understand how to put multiple textures/materials on top of each other. It’s been driving me insane.

Thank you so much for any thoughts!

Hi Kelly,

Thanks a lot. Your morning is my evening (L.A. Pacific Time).

Sorry about your experience. I have that kind of experience often when I search for a new software perhaps just for one specific feature. I think that a shift is needed to think more about how to make something accessible than to produce just content. In the training team, we check out ideas with snippets and timestamp tutorials. Input like yours will bring us closer to the target, so your invested time and expressing it might pay off in the long run. For now, I hope I can lift that heaviness of in-balance between time-investment and results.

Let me start with an explanation:

If you have some experience with Photoshop, you might know that layer masks will work as follows: dark areas produce transparency, and brighter areas in the mask will show the layer’s content.
Besides that, you might have used the Opacity slider of a layer.
If both things are true, then this knowledge is pretty much all you need to understand the Material Blender In Redshift.

The slider from 0% to 100% is nothing else as if the layer-mask in Photoshop would go from black (0%) to white (100%). In other words, each image pixel has a layer-mask pixel that provides a value of 0% or up to 100%. Photoshop’s Layer-mask is pixel-based, like the slider is for the whole image.
In other words, if the layer-mask pixel is black, then the image pixel is multiplied by zero, which means not seen. If the layer-mask pixel is white, then the pixel value is multiplied by one: Full visible. So, I guess you know already what a mid-gray would do! Half the value (0.5 or 50%) means the image value is multiplied by 0.5 and will result to be half visible. (Well, if it is a gamma image, than this will be different, but since alpha channels and masks are “data-maps”, it should be linear, of course. Which means no translation into something else)

For Redshift 3D:

How does this translate now to the Material Blender? The Base Layer is like the Background in Photoshop. No Layer mask is needed here or Blend.
Then comes the layer.1 and the need for a Blend(The layer mask)

Will this work for the Displacement Blend in the same way. Nope. Between your source for the Displacement and the Displacement Blend, you need to put a Displacement node. It is a Displacement Blend and not a Texture blend.

Please note that all of that works only with the settings on in the RS-Object tag> Geometry> Displacement and Tessellation.

Here is a little screen capture and scene file. Let me know if one or the other helped to clear this.
https://www.amazon.com/clouddrive/share/yPgv0EeijUKIRCN9xSXIi90JOlfUH3f39Fxo61iLHSw

Suggestions for 3rd party material:

To get a good start into Redshift3D, we have one member here on Cineversity who has done a very nice piece of training. Another member here, who did training for Cineversity and has been an excellent friend to Maxon since long has published it. HelloLuxx.com
I will point to other 3rd party packages in the future after reviewing them. I hope that my curating will help to access material faster and less stressful.

All the best

Thanks so much, Dr. S!

I have no idea why I thought you lived in Germany??! Ha!

Yes, helloluxx is so good!

I appreciate your explanation more than you know! You’re a star.

xx

K

Thanks a lot, Kelly!

Yes, I lived a long time in Berlin (nearly two decades), and now (for way over 16 years) in the official partner city of Berlin: L.A.!
I love both very deeply. You can pull the man out of Berlin, but you can’t get Berlin out of him, hehe. I guess that is what you might have picked up. But I’m working on my Southern California accent, just to be clear.

You’re very welcome. I love to share and take obstacles out of the way so that people can create with a focus on the essential stuff.

Enjoy your weekend.

P.S.: perhaps check out also the RS Color Layer. (For image and texture)
https://docs.redshift3d.com/display/RSDOCS/Color+Layer?product=cinema4d