|
|
Introduction
f-Edge is a procedural map plug-in that allows fine touch-up smoothing and other effects on edges, so your object can become not just photo-realistic, but much more real-life looking.
The need for such plug-in comes from the real world where you almost never have perfect sharp edges on objects. Usually you have a little smoothness and damages - there are rarely edges which you can easily cut yourself on.
However the task of smoothing a mesh by the ordinary means is really enormous in both terms of time and mesh result - you usually end up having almost 3 times the number of vertices after smoothing the edges of a complex shape. And with adding other effects, such as geometric noise, the number of new vertices can be increased much more.
What we did is make this task as easy as we could make it as well as still independent from any rendering or atmospheric or material plug-in.
Overview
f-Edge consist of two procedural map types: Stack and f-Edge
The f-Edge map must be placed in the Bump or Diffuse map slots. You can
define the smoothing radius in world space units and you can
choose to smooth the corresponding vertices or not.
When assigned as Bump, the f-Edge map will smooth the selected edges of the object. The bump amount must be set to 100%, otherwise you will still see the hard edge of the object.
When assigned as Diffuse, the f-Edge map will paint the selected edges of the object with the given color. The Gradient option will use an alpha gradient to smooth the color transition.
The Stack map allows you to
add more than one bump in the bump slot, by adding them together.
The Stack map has number of slots in which you can place
other maps. There is also a value which determines the amount by
which the map in the slot affects the material.
So you can have for example as No.1 an f-Edge map at 100 %,
as No.2 a Noise with size 50 at 40% and in slot 3 another
Noise - Turbulent with size 10 at 8%. The result will be
a smoothed object with hard Noisy surface from far away and small
touch-up noise for an extreme close-up defined by the
third material.
The main dialog box, or how to control the edge effects :
Apply To :
You can apply the effects to all sharp edges of the scene, only to selected ones, or choose the set of edges by name.
Radius :
This is the radius of curve which smooths the edge, or the
distance from the edge, where the other effects works (the red projections).
Smooth Vertices :
1 : with Smooth Vertices enabled;
2 : with smooth vertices disabled.
Invert Curve :
1 : The edge uses normal curve (convex);
2 : The edge uses inverted curve (concave).
Edge Weight :
You can control the curve with the weight of the edge. The weight value lies in the interval [0 ... 100]. In (1) weight is equal to 50, in (2) it's more than 50, and in (3) it's less than 50. Value 0 defines sharp edge.
Edge color and gradient :
You can use these options only in diffuse
slot.
1 : without gradient;
2 : with gradient (start=0).
2 : with gradient (start=0.6).
Here is the rendered sample :
NOTE : You can use f-Edge as a Mask or Mix map to limit the effect of
other maps along the edges of the object (see Example step 3 below).
Noise :
You can add noise (deformations) to the
edge, with different intensity and strength:
1 : Noise over normal curve (convex);
2 : Noise over inverted curve (concave).
Important things to know:
Example usage:
Step 1 : The 'f' letter :
Step 2 : Bump slot at 100%, f-Edge in the bump slot with noise
added :
Step 3 : Diffuse map, Mask between Perlin Marble and f-Edge,
with color gradient enabled :
A more complex example:
You can add irregularities at the edges of the object by restricting an appropriate bump map with f-Edge. For example, the built-in Stucco map does a good job as an irregularity map. On top of that you can apply f-Edge as a bump map to smooth the edges of the object. Here's the map setup in the bump slot of the material:
(C) 2001-2006 Dimension Design AG.
www.ddag.org
