mix 3 material

by **Matteo3d** » Tue Aug 08, 2017 1:35 pm

Hello guys,
I would like to create an effect on a geometry,
A statue, I would like from the feet to the thighs to be water (material), from thighs to chest, from wood, from chest to head, in fading together,
I've tried with mix material and a gradient structure, it works but I have only two possibilities of materials,
Do you have a solution?
Thank you

by **FrankPooleFloating** » Tue Aug 08, 2017 2:05 pm

Hmmm... Maybe build it as mat1 to mat2 as one mix, and mat2 to mat3 as another, then mix those two mixes?...

by **itsallgoode9** » Tue Aug 08, 2017 3:25 pm

Matteo3d wrote:Hello guys,
I would like to create an effect on a geometry,
A statue, I would like from the feet to the thighs to be water (material), from thighs to chest, from wood, from chest to head, in fading together,
I've tried with mix material and a gradient structure, it works but I have only two possibilities of materials,
Do you have a solution?
Thank you

You have to pipe the first mix material into another mix material to mix more than two materials together. There's no layering with alphas, like Maxwell Render or Photoshop.

It's the most damn convoluted and sloppy system possible, but devs don't seem to care. It's been brought up multiple times in the past and the issue gets ignored.

by **bepeg4d** » Wed Aug 09, 2017 7:31 am

Hi guys,
in my opinion is not the damn convoluted and sloppy system possible... you have a lot of flexibility, and possibilities.
Here is a fast example of a Mix of a Mix of a Mix with four different materials:

MixMixMix.orbx: (948.55 KiB) Downloaded 122 times

ciao beppe

by **itsallgoode9** » Wed Aug 09, 2017 10:09 am

Imagine working in Photoshop if you could only make 2 layers interact at a time...

Basic stuff like you're showing is not a problem, but it gets messy and hard to read with complicated materials. The 2 material mix material setup as a the default way to combine materials adds zero benefit over a layered system, it only needlessly complicates graph nodes; there is nothing in your graph node that couldn't be achieved in a layered setup, all the while, reducing two of your mix material nodes, effectively cutting your node graph in half.

The first image I attached shows one of my material graphs for a project at work. All the nodes circled in red are mix nodes piped into other mix nodes. The second image shows how the same material would be laid out if it were a layered material approach. In the layered setup, it can clearly be seen that there are 5 of materials. If another artist were to work on my project, they could see that immediately , without needing to decipher anything . With the mix material setup, there is no way to figure out exactly what is going on without tracing your through the entire graph from the topmost node.

A layered approach reduces nodes needed AND keeps all of your material nodes in the same space visually, making it easier to read.