OTOY Forums

Does RS plan on including anisotropy (and anisotropy maps) in the future?

I doubt it, because there's no need for it. The shaders included in Octane already support photo-realistic specular highlights, without tricks or hacks like anisotropicy, which just stretch a specular highlight along UVs. If you're asking for un-realistic shaders like other renderers, that's a different request, and I could understand the need for a traditional shader set, but if that's the request, then anisotropic shaders would be last on that request list, because anisotropicy is already achievable with the current shaders. Try it out, just adjust the roughness of the shader and notice how the specular highlight correctly warps around the topology of the surface being rendered. No need for fake stuff.

I can see how that would be the case as you suggest, but I am thinking of the infinite other types of anisotropy such as that on the bottom of a stainless steel cooking pan as one example. In other unbiased renderers, unless you use anisotropy maps, you have to model ALL of the microscopic concentric ridges to get it right and the render times shoot through the roof. However, with GPU-based rendering, you really can load the front end of the process by allowing higher poly meshes with a far lower performance hit at render time. I suppose a very high resolution normal or displacement map could achieve the same thing.

That's correct; I've gotten some great looking anisotropic looking highlights just by adjusting the bump or normal map on a material. Find or create a high-res brushed metal texture with stretched fibers and go to town

I'm up for anisotropy, it's another material property like bump, which btw is a trick also, so you don't have to model micro-detail. I hope they include it sometime.

I never thought of that before, but bump and normal maps really ARE kludges.

Yes, bump is definitely a trick, but a necessary one until displacement maps are implemented.

Have you tried using bump maps instead? Did it work for you?

Not yet, but there shouldn't be any reason why it wouldn't work. "Just" takes a lot longer to set up for anisotropy.