Really need an IOR texture map

[fatrobotsneedlove]

I know this has been brought up before, but this is a really really big missing feature for me. Substance Painter/Designer now has easy export settings for Vray, Arnold, Corona, and Redshift. (Mari 3 even has actual shaders for Vray, Redshift, and Arnold)

The Allegorithmic team tried to make a Painter/designer export for Octane but couldn't because of the lack of an IOR texture input.

I know there was talk of a possible OSL solution in the future with V3, but is there some limitation of the engine that would make it really difficult to implement now with the Glossy Material?

It's just really frustrating to have such a great workflow with Vray, which I still use occasionally, in Painter now and soon with Mari, while having to jump through hoops with Octane to get everything looking right. Along with a lack of UDIM support, this is really cramping my workflow.

Any chance something could be worked out? Or will we just have to wait and see what options OSL brings?

[Goldorak]

I know this has been brought up before, but this is a really really big missing feature for me. Substance Painter/Designer now has easy export settings for Vray, Arnold, Corona, and Redshift. (Mari 3 even has actual shaders for Vray, Redshift, and Arnold)

The Allegorithmic team tried to make a Painter/designer export for Octane but couldn't because of the lack of an IOR texture input.

I know there was talk of a possible OSL solution in the future with V3, but is there some limitation of the engine that would make it really difficult to implement now with the Glossy Material?

It's just really frustrating to have such a great workflow with Vray, which I still use occasionally, in Painter now and soon with Mari, while having to jump through hoops with Octane to get everything looking right. Along with a lack of UDIM support, this is really cramping my workflow.

Any chance something could be worked out? Or will we just have to wait and see what options OSL brings?

I am in agreement that an IOR texture input pin is important. We are close enough with the release of V3 where an OSL solution should be the way we resolve this and any other missing shader functionality not in 2.x. UDIM is a higher level feature that can be implemented in the host app on top of Octane itself. We may look into formal low level support at the end of the 3.x dev cycle if necessary.

I will talk to the team and see how much time it might take to get IOR texture input in the final 2.x release. It may not be the best use of dev resources to delay V3 over this, but we will look into it.

[fatrobotsneedlove]

Thanks for the reply. I would agree, no need to delay V3 when it's so close. I have a lot of fire and explosion vdbs from houdini I really want to start playing with in Octane

But I would really appreciate it if an OSL solution for the IOR textures can be worked out as quickly as possible once V3 ships.

As far as UDIM's, the Modo implementation looks really good. But I use standalone on an Octane dedicated render machine so I can keep modeling/comping on my workstation while I render. So a standalone UDIM implementation at some point would also be greatly appreciated.

[kacperspala]

Yes yes yes ! Same reasons here, please do IOR tex pin for quixel/substance workflows It would be great to have that in v3 at release : )

[Polygons]

Raising this thread from the dead to add to the users requesting IOR maps. I can save considerable time by having an IOR map instead of separate materials for every level of IOR on a prop. Are we still waiting on OSL for this to be doable?

[Goldorak]

Raising this thread from the dead to add to the users requesting IOR maps. I can save considerable time by having an IOR map instead of separate materials for every level of IOR on a prop. Are we still waiting on OSL for this to be doable?

Yes

[abstrax]

Raising this thread from the dead to add to the users requesting IOR maps. I can save considerable time by having an IOR map instead of separate materials for every level of IOR on a prop. Are we still waiting on OSL for this to be doable?

I will have a look at it the coming days to see how much work it is and what the performance impact. How would you define the index of refraction via a texture that usually has only values in the range [0 .. 1]. Would it make sense to make calculate the IOR via IOR = 1 + <IOR texture value>? I.e. without an additional multiply texture, the IOR value range would then be [1 .. 2]. Using a multiply texture you could extend the range if necessary.

[itsallgoode9]

Raising this thread from the dead to add to the users requesting IOR maps. I can save considerable time by having an IOR map instead of separate materials for every level of IOR on a prop. Are we still waiting on OSL for this to be doable?

I will have a look at it the coming days to see how much work it is and what the performance impact. How would you define the index of refraction via a texture that usually has only values in the range [0 .. 1]. Would it make sense to make calculate the IOR via IOR = 1 + <IOR texture value>? I.e. without an additional multiply texture, the IOR value range would then be [1 .. 2]. Using a multiply texture you could extend the range if necessary.

hmmm, good point. Although multiply would work, i think that's not the easiest solution for the end user considering the user would have to do some extra math and pretty exact values in their texture to get it to work. LIke, say you want IOR values of 7, 4 and 1.33 in your texture...that would be kinda headache inducing to try and figure out the texture values to use for each number to make them all the correct value after a multiplier. Could there actually be a new IOR texture node that has multiple slots for alpha masks, and each slot has a value box beside it that you input what IOR corresponds for each mask? Or just use an HDR texture (although I don't find that completely ideal either because of size and the fact that your whole texture would be white).?

Do any other renders have an IOR map option? This is something i've always wanted but my other renderers have not had the option so I don't know how it's implemented elsewhere.

[abstrax]

Raising this thread from the dead to add to the users requesting IOR maps. I can save considerable time by having an IOR map instead of separate materials for every level of IOR on a prop. Are we still waiting on OSL for this to be doable?

I will have a look at it the coming days to see how much work it is and what the performance impact. How would you define the index of refraction via a texture that usually has only values in the range [0 .. 1]. Would it make sense to make calculate the IOR via IOR = 1 + <IOR texture value>? I.e. without an additional multiply texture, the IOR value range would then be [1 .. 2]. Using a multiply texture you could extend the range if necessary.

hmmm, good point. Although multiply would work, i think that's not the easiest solution for the end user considering the user would have to do some extra math and pretty exact values in their texture to get it to work. LIke, say you want IOR values of 7, 4 and 1.33 in your texture...that would be kinda headache inducing to try and figure out the texture values to use for each number to make them all the correct value after a multiplier. Could there actually be a new IOR texture node that has multiple slots for alpha masks, and each slot has a value box beside it that you input what IOR corresponds for each mask? Or just use an HDR texture (although I don't find that completely ideal either because of size and the fact that your whole texture would be white).?

If IOR would be a texture node, you could do this with a mix texture tree.

Do any other renders have an IOR map option? This is something i've always wanted but my other renderers have not had the option so I don't know how it's implemented elsewhere.

Don't know. C4D doesn't allow it as far as I know.

[fatrobotsneedlove]

Do any other renders have an IOR map option? This is something i've always wanted but my other renderers have not had the option so I don't know how it's implemented elsewhere.

Vray and Corona both get ior maps out of substance painter/ddo/megascans bridge.