Minor Project: Ice 001-006 & Ceramics Glaze Test Influence

In these tests, I've actually applied my ice maps to the aiStandardSurface shader in Arnold rather than different shaders in Mental Ray. It was suggested to me to begin recording these texturing experiments in a more formal, organised manner...similar to glaze tests for ceramics. I like the idea of this because, despite saving all of the files anyway, it'll ensure I can recreate the materials as I'll have the settings all documented as well as exhibit the work that I've done that may not be seen otherwise.

Source

Source

The format below is just one way I may record my textures, I will most likely change the font. In Maya I used a Skydome Light and a Directional Light, a polygon plane with an aiStandardSurface shader (slightly reflective so I can see how any lights, reflections, and refractions look), and a polygon sphere which is what I am using to experiment on. I kept the camera locked in the same position and all the render settings the same. Perhaps I'll add this to the swatch description somewhere too so I know what samples and other settings I used, for now I'll have a separate image describing the settings I had (I realize that some of these values may be wrong/too high/irrelevant...this is just what I had at the time of rendering due to previous experiments).

 On the swatches themselves, I included the main channels I used and I only wrote down what values I changed/what type of image I plugged in. I hope to figure out a similar layout I could use for the animation tests as well. I will most likely re-render these as well once I have a better idea of what setup I want...I also want to add the render times of each image since some of them took a lot longer to render than others.

I really like how this turned out using Arnold rather than Mental Ray and I prefer Ice 004 and Ice 006 the most. I felt I was able to get better results a lot easier in Arnold than Mental Ray in this case, despite struggling with it in the past so I hope that is a good sign. I may continue to experiment with this substance, and I think I want to try creating a height map to see if that will enhance it any further or produce interesting Displacement Map glitches (like in this test). I also plan to try and progress onto developing some other substances in Substance Designer such as a sponge. I also hope on experimenting with animating Displacement Maps and I have to see how that would work using just shaders (ex. the aiStandard Surface) and how that would change or distort a texture file like the ones I have been using for this ice material.

Ice 004

Ice 006