ZBrushCentral

Difference between shader and material

ZBrush Usage Questions
#1

I’ve been using the Projection Master.

1-What is the difference between a shader and material nad when would you use them?

2-With them selected the result appears to be shiny and shelaqued additively. For every projection the affected areas become more and more shiny, why is this?

#2

A material is a collection of shaders, sometimes just 1, sometimes upto 4. (in ZB)

as for your 2nd question, I have a feeling you are overbakeing. In PM, if you use the shaded option, it may help if you “flatten” you layer 1st with a flat color. This will prevent shading from being picked up everywhere. I made a simple plug-in to help make this easier.
Flat Canvas plug-in

#3

after clicking on projection master it refers to shader or material what is the difference?

#4

In PM,
Material refers to the material that pixols are getting painted with. Like rgb, they are indexed numbers. For example flat color is 0, and fastshader is 1. so with this option on, you can embed different materials into 1 texture map. If this special multi-material texture is exported as a PSD, the different materials will be different shades of grey in the alpha channel, for use in rebuilding materials in another app.

Shaded refers to the final rendered look including lighting, shadows, and any other render options, even fibers. be careful when using the shading option, as it can result in over bakeing your object when used a few times. IOW, shading on top of shading. To aviod this, paint a flat color over the areas you wish not to shade.

BTW, the word you were looking for was “Shaded” not shader. Quite different.

#5

the plug in fixed the problem thanks, although after clicking on the plug in I can’t see the object it becomes flat and white.

Is there a way to avoid this?

#6

sad to say, NO. by definition, flat means lack of shading. only the raw colors are shown, until you pickup the object again. I’ll take it that white is your object’s current color.

You can see this in action in the PM tutorials, under chapter 3. a wood texture gets flatened in this one.

Here’s a quick way to see shaded feature in action.

  • place a 3d object on the canvas, and drop into PM with shaded on.
  • paint entire object flat, or use plug-in
  • place another object on top.
  • pick up object (exit PM)
    you should see your 2nd 3d object painted on, with shading and all. repeat as many times as you like.
#7

thanks

#8

Here’s a quick script I made, using PM. It shows the shaded option and material option of PM in use.

1st it drops a fiber filled ring, using shaded option.
2nd it drops a shiny ball, using material option
3rd it drops another fiber ring, this time with both shaded and materials on.

pm_options.TXT

#9

cool thanks