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material stacking not working - usually does

Posted: Wed Sep 26, 2018 4:23 pm
by mitchino
I'm rendering a label with 2 inks on it, and using material stacking in c4d with Octane. Usually this works fine for me, but it isn't on this job.

I have a curved label with thickness, the front of the label has a selection set called 'graphic' and the rest of the label has a selection set called 'paper'.

I have a paper material applied to the label using the selection set 'paper' and then 3 x materials applied using the selection set 'graphic'. Every material is using the same cylindrical projection and coordinates. The top two materials on the 'graphic' selection set have black and white photoshop masks in their opacity channel to control where they appear.

I can't see anything I've done wrong, and normally this workflow should be ok shouldn't it? Any ideas why it's not working as normal?

Re: material stacking not working - usually does

Posted: Wed Sep 26, 2018 6:03 pm
by mitchino
So have now changed workflow to using a blend material - got all my sub materials working, but why is it that in the specular channel of a sub material there is no way to set the colour of the specular, like there is in a normal material?

Re: material stacking not working - usually does

Posted: Wed Sep 26, 2018 6:16 pm
by aoktar
You can't use mix materials in stacking.

Re: material stacking not working - usually does

Posted: Wed Sep 26, 2018 9:57 pm
by mitchino
I'm not using any mix materials in the stack.

Got a good result with a blend material, I had to connect an RGB spectrum node to the specular channel of the sub material to get specular colour. I assume this is correct?

Why are sub materials different from normal materials? Why can we not have a blend material that mixes ordinary materials in the same way the mix material does?

Re: material stacking not working - usually does

Posted: Wed Sep 26, 2018 10:23 pm
by TonyBoy
As Ahmet said, "you can't use mix materials in stacking" but it appears you can with a blend. Why blends are different from mixes is way beyond my beans and taters.

Re: material stacking not working - usually does

Posted: Thu Sep 27, 2018 6:15 am
by mitchino
I'm not using a blend material in a stack, I've given up on stacking, I'm using the blend material on it's own.

Re: material stacking not working - usually does

Posted: Thu Sep 27, 2018 8:15 am
by Studio21
blend sub materials are different since they are not actually part core octane materials. Ahmet coded them himself from scratch I believe, to allow us C4D users to have a more elegant material mixing solution then the stabdard mix materials


Best,
G

Re: material stacking not working - usually does

Posted: Thu Sep 27, 2018 8:49 am
by aoktar
Studio21 wrote:blend sub materials are different since they are not actually part core octane materials. Ahmet coded them himself from scratch I believe, to allow us C4D users to have a more elegant material mixing solution then the stabdard mix materials


Best,
G
Right! It's a mix material system in depth. Under a compact UI. Not visible in C4D material editor as many materials. It avoids the problems of mix material system like hacked ways for triggering updates/delayed previews/copy&paste issues/etc...

Re: material stacking not working - usually does

Posted: Thu Sep 27, 2018 9:00 am
by Studio21
Ahmet just one thing bugging me and other users is the yellow title of the sub material. Ive asked a few times before please make it possible to change that its very difficult to read the name of the sub material ;)


Thx
G