Graphics Reference
In-Depth Information
Chapter 12
Improving Final Renders
In many cases, finishing touches need to be added to give a render just the right look. Sometimes these effects
could be rendered directly, but adding them after the render is easy and offers much better flexibility and
speed. You will look at methods for creating the best-quality finished product. This chapter covers the follow-
ing topics:
• Mastering the Shader Tree
• Using render outputs
• Sweetening 3D renders by using Photoshop
Mastering the Shader Tree
At several points throughout this topic, we have covered the Shader Tree. The Shader Tree is home to all
materials created in modo. You have looked at its use in creating textures for scenes of differing types and
styles, but the overall amount of complexity has been relatively simple. This section covers the use of the
Shader Tree to create more-complex textures. You will look at layering and grouping materials (while making
good use of procedural and image-based textures), and detailing textures individually or in groups. This will
broaden your perspective and help you create textures for just about anything you can imagine.
Layering Textures
From a simplified standpoint, the Shader Tree works on a layered basis. This is similar to Photoshop, in which
higher layers are visible unless blended or masked. Assigning a material to a group of polygons essentially
adds a mask to the image so that the given material is visible for the polygons with that material tag. Layering
textures upon textures grants an enormous amount of power. Let's begin by creating a simple scene to work
with:
1. Create a basic scene of a sphere sitting on the ground plane.
2. Place a shadow catcher preset object in the scene (Assets Meshes Basic ShadowCatcher).
3. Insert a preset environment. (I used Outdoor Spherical 02 from the Outdoor environment presets.)
4. Enable the Global Illumination option and hide your light. Your render will look something like Figure
12-1 .
Figure 12-1: A simple scene for testing work in the Shader Tree
 
 
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