Hey everyone,
I’m very new to vfx and am trying to create a material which acts like a salt rock lamp. Where it looks like a rock, but I can control a glow via a parameter. This is what I have so far, I was curious if there was a solution with a better result? The texture maps are messy, I’m just trying to get the idea across first.
Perhaps I could us a radial gradient instead? I tried making a material like this with a Spiral Blur Scene Texture node (following a tutorial), but it was over 700 instructions. Which I presume is overkill.
Thanks for any help and insight!
Using an IF node will give you 1-bit results (ie on or off), which is why you’re seeing such harsh transitions. If you want something where only the brighter aspects of an image contribute to emissive, you can first run your texture through a power node, set the exponent to something high (try 8, but experiment), then multiply that result by something like 10. Then use that directly into emissive.
I’m a big fan of smoothstep.
It’s pretty rare to find an erosion IF that isn’t made better by smoothstep.
Thanks guys! It took me awhile to play around and understand the two methods, but I think I’m headed on the right track. I also came across a few happy accidents by plugging a panner into the emissive channel.
My next steps will be to add a mask via the power node method and tint the emissive color as well. Thanks again, I appreciate the help!
