OTOY Forums

Hey y'all,

I'm as new as a baby with Octane, so I need some help.

What I want to do is create a bunch of gemstone materials -- ruby, sapphire, emerald, ete. I found one or two tiny specks ofv info on how I could do it, but there really isn't much. There's this old thread -- viewtopic.php?f=6&t=8383&start=10 -- but cant see the first post at all.

So...can anyone help me learn?

One way (and arguably the best way) to help you become proficient at making materials is reverse engineering LiveDB materials. Do this: Fire up Standalone > Import a mesh > Find one of the materials for this mesh in the Nodegraph Editor > Drag in a material (or multiple) from the LiveDB into the Nodegraph Editor > Plug one into your mesh's material > Now double-click this node (the livedb node that is plugged into material) > Your are now inside that LiveDB material, and free to explore what makes it tick, go nuts playing with and changing anything in there you want. This is definitely the way to go, imho.

Well, there is a diamond in the LiveDB. I can replicate that easily as all it uses is as Specular. But those don't have a color channel, so how am I to get ruby, etc?

Transmission. Drag a colored liquid in (Beer, for example) and look at that. Probably just need to change color in Transmission and IOR and maybe a couple other tiny tweaks and you should be on your your way. There is a possibility that Reflection may need to have a color provided, and not a value... I am not a jeweler... But for Index of Refraction (which is absolutely critical to get exactly right with gemstones) there is tons of info, charts, etc out there. Here is one for gemstones: https://www.ajsgem.com/articles/gemston ... guide.html and here is a general IOR chart: http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hb ... indrf.html

Also, before you go too far with Specular, you may want to investigate if the new Octane Universal Material may have some stuff in there that might allow one to achieve even more physically accurate gemstone materials than Specular...

And I'm quite surprised that the LiveDB is not lousy with gemstones. Weird. You are not the only jeweler using Octane. I've seen plenty of these blokes (all seem to use Rhino for whatever reason) here over the years discussing jewelry renders in Octane.......

Oh,Universal is a new thing in Octane 4? I've been using 3. I got 4, but haven't installed it yet.

It'd be nice if the DB had search engine.

Hmmm...i dunno. I have vision issues, but here's what I got for sapphire messing with a Specular and Universal, respectively...
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