adding two materials

[Sarford]

Hey guys,

I'm messing around with Octane 3 and trying to build a material like frosted glass. I get the frosted glass allright, but I want to layer a specular layer on top of that. I see that Octane has a mix node but you can only blend between two materials as far as I can see. What I want to do is to add the specular to the other material, how do I do that? I tried the modo color blend node but Octane didn't like that.

[calus]

Hey guys,

I'm messing around with Octane 3 and trying to build a material like frosted glass. I get the frosted glass allright, but I want to layer a specular layer on top of that. I see that Octane has a mix node but you can only blend between two materials as far as I can see. What I want to do is to add the specular to the other material, how do I do that? I tried the modo color blend node but Octane didn't like that.

If you need to mix more than two material, just use an octane mix node plugged into another mix node.

[Sarford]

Thanks for the reply Calus, but I want to ADD a material, like mathematically add the specular values to the other material. Haven't been able to find out how to do that.
I did find another way though, just use a specular material for the sharp reflections and use a scattering medium for the refraction. That way I can have a frosted glass with sharp reflections.

[calus]

Thanks for the reply Calus, but I want to ADD a material, like mathematically add the specular values to the other material. Haven't been able to find out how to do that.
I did find another way though, just use a specular material for the sharp reflections and use a scattering medium for the refraction. That way I can have a frosted glass with sharp reflections.

Well you can't "add" a material to another one with octane, it breaks energie conservation law.
Octane is physically correct, so a real material layering would involve way more than "add" but also thickness absorption and transmission per layer.
But anyway with Octane you can only Mix materials, but just try to mix now a very glossy material on top of your frozen ice only 10% amount or using a fall-off texture , and you 'll see it's already working as a glossy layer.

[AdrienG]

Hello, i guess it's because of octane/s realism and conservation energy rules. You can't blend with an add method two materials like vray would allow you to do.
The idea is probably to extruded a second shape as a skin or film on top of the frosted glass an apply the shiny specular material to it

Cheers

[VISUAL360]

Hi there.

I hope I'm understanding what you are looking for. Here's an example using the standalone but think you can apply the same principle in the plugin. I just recently "figured this out" for myself recently about using "mix material" and separating a different material for one element from another. Basically like adding a label/text onto a frosted bottle.

See pics showing the Octane viewport and nodes. Note the Mix Material that is the primary texture node to the obj. That mix really consists of the glossy (metallic type) and the specular (for the frosted glass). The "amount" is actually an alpha image. The black text will create a mask for the glossy type. The mix node shows some circled areas in red that are pretty important. I also showed you what the basic image looks like that is used for the "amount".

Of course, this is the way I make it work...might be a different/better way!

Hope this helps.