Material Layers Question Tweet

[lunarstudio]

I have older "metal" materials that I used for projects many years ago.
The more recent Octane plugin introduced newer materials with additional slots, in particular the "Material Layer."
I'm confused as to how to properly "translate" the old materials into newer ones yet still received similar results.

Older version metal example:
1. Glossy Material
2. Diffuse: Texture/RGB Image.
3. Specular 1.0
4. BRDF: Octane
5. Roughness: .1

Newer Version Metal question:
1. Glossy Material.
2. Material Layer: ???

Do I need a Glossy Material with a Metallic Layer on top? Do I even need glossy materials underneath?

Also another question, let's say I start a new material from scratch, what would be a base starting material/suggested workflow starting new? Should I start with "Universal Material" Instead?
Let's say I choose the following:
1. Diffuse material.
2. Do I pick a metallic material layer on top if I want it to be metal now?
3. Let's say I want a texture in the "Diffuse" slot. I click "no map" and it brings up a popup:
4. Do I still choose: "\Maps\Octane\Image\RGB Image" for example?
5. Now I have TWO more options: File Name and Standard Texture. Which one would you suggest using? And why not just have one?


By the way I'm old school and still using the old material editor (probably should switch at some point.)
Sorry but this is really confusing. Not so much if I started new but trying to use the newer system introduces questions. I appreciated the simplicity of Octane initially which is part of the reason why I migrated away from VRay many years ago (I'm actually the person who requested simplified settings to Vlado many years ago.) It's nice to have something that just works right out of the box without having to tweak a million settings.

[paride4331]

Hi lunarstudio,

The Universal material puts Substance maps and PBR outputs into OctaneRender. Substance Painter and other engines map well to this material.

Universal materials blend between dielectric and metallic with a Metallic parameter value from 0 - 1. Compared to other materials, the Universal material is equivalent to the Metallic material when its Metallic parameter is set to 1.0, and it is similar to the Glossy material when its Metallic parameter is set to 0.0.

The Universal material is designed to follow after the workflow in the PBR model, since the Metallic material falls short of the Metallic and Roughness maps that are often derived from Substance Painter and other tools. It handles dielectric material (Diffuse and Glossy BRDF) and also Metallic material (Glossy BRDF) with assumed IOR or custom IOR for both dielectric and metallic surfaces.

https://docs.otoy.com/3DSMaxH/3DSMaxPlu ... =universal
https://docs.otoy.com/3DSMaxH/3DSMaxPlu ... t=metallic

The layered material system lets you construct complex Materials that consist of a base layer and up to eight Material Layers. The Layers are based on components used in previous OctaneRender Materials. Using this set of unique layers, OctaneRender now lets you recreate complex Materials in a physically-based manner, as opposed to manually mixing Materials together.

viewtopic.php?f=51&t=72701#p369340

Basically you would use 3dsMax general maps in standard texture. Automatic baking is permormed when a standard Bitmap is used as 'Standard texture' in Octane materials.

Regards
Paride

[lunarstudio]

So simply put, try to move/convert all previous Octane Materials over to the newer "Universal Material"?