Silverwing Quick-Ish-Tip: My 10 Favorite Octane Nodes

[@1polygonewithme]

What are the few youtubers that I drop everything I'm doing and immediately watch the video thanks for this awesome video 👍👍😁😁

[@SilverwingVFX]

Oh man, thank you so much. I really appreciate that you like my videos and want to watch them asap ❤️ That means a lot to me 😊 Super nice to see you get so much out of those 🙌

[@hamorisz]

Thank you! Discord and Plasticity content would be great idea! ✌

[@SilverwingVFX]

Thank you very much for your comment and the input. Very much appreciate you watching the whole thing 🙌 Cheers and a great mid of the week to you!

[@ForgingMind]

Fantastic, loved the quick build of the floor and knob materials 👍👍

[@SilverwingVFX]

Hey hey and thank you very much for your comment. Always nice seeing you! Thank you for your positive feedback. Yeah getting those sections as short as they are ironically took me a lot of time ha ha!

[@4dthieves]

Excellent video (and even Quick-ish)! The multiple gradient node workflow at the end of the material tree makes so much sense. Never worry that what you're sharing is too small, nerdy, or uninteresting. I'm sure I speak for others when I say that I always learn something and I'm never bored. :)

[@SilverwingVFX]

Thank you very much for your comment. Great to hear that you like the Gradient workflow and your uplifting words. So nice hearing that you are good with a lot of different topics here 🙌

[@josiahschwahn3842]

The best channel for octane! Thank you so much for all the value you provide. I cont to learn rapidly because of these videos :)

[@SilverwingVFX]

Thank you so much. Amazing to hear that 🙌 To the future of rapid learning on this channel 😄✨

[@andreas_resch]

As always great and full of valuable information. I really appreciate that you've shown the Blender versions as well. Makes it much easier now.

[@SilverwingVFX]

Hey Andreas. Always super nice seeing your comments here 🙌 Thank you very much for watching and your support! Can´t promise to always show both C4D and Blender. But for comparison videos like this I think it´s the way to go!

[@0zaidi]

a treat! haha, I always wondered about the octane gradient start and end points, my intuition was to just ignore those inputs and use the values instead since typically I have one at the start and one at the end, but it's good to know it was that way by design after all those years 😂, the bonus was great! it's interesting to see a different approach, and a more optimized one, because the way I'd usually go about it is to use composite materials or material layers (trying to think of the materials as if they were physical layers, but often this gets sluggish real quick), in this case doing everything on a single material seems really fun and more streamlined, I appreciate the bonus bts also, the top bar is a nice addition for people who wonder about tools and versions, and yes I'd love to see some plasticity too, even though I've been using it for some time now, mainly designing products and slightly weird package designs, recently I used it to model the green glass cup, while none of those are film/vfx assets it's really a great medium for sketching and IRL production (on a limited scale) I'd love to hear your thoughts on it 🔟 as usual, thank you and I wish you a great week ahead 🙏🌟

[@SilverwingVFX]

I love how this is a thing now that you always send me long interesting messages on all of my videos! Thank you so much for taking the time to write all of those! Great I could answer you some long standing questions. The secrets of the gradient node ha ha. My materials usually also look a bit more complicated. You can see that if you are looking inside the Master Knob that I include in Parteon. This is the one I did before the tut to break down the shading and the values that I would need beforehand. Usually I have concave and convex structures separated to have even more control. But as I was on a time budget and wanted to not make it to complicated, I opted for this method. Which worked remarkably superb. I usually would use at least two materials here. Getting metals and non metals separated is usually a good thing, so you do not have a blend between dielectric and conductive surfaces. But that´s usually the extend I go to. The approach I am doing here is more or less the BPR map approach. And, as said it works remarkable great. Interesting to hear you have been using plasticity too, I don´t think I have anything to offer already experienced users. But I am enjoying the process of diving into it myself. I find it fascinating that it uses a lot of the same shortcuts as Blender. So since I recently learned it Blender helped me a lot to learn it much quicker! P.s. I would really love to see what you have been up to in Plasticity. The "Weird Package Designs" make me curious! Cheers and thank you very much for your huuuge comment. As always, highly appreciated! And thank you for the ✨🔟✨

[@0zaidi]

@@SilverwingVFX haha, yes, it's a thing for quite a bit, and I'm glad you find them interesting. thank you for answering the random question I had yes I've seen your material structures on IG stories and Twitter, and in video snippets, and they are marvelous the way I'd have done it before seeing this, is working on a metallic material, then adding a glossy material layer on top for the plastic coating, and another one for the grime; mainly so I can have more control; but your setup is compact and interesting, skips the baking process with rivaling results plasticity made it easier for me to jump into blender haha, also I just remembered you mentioned discord in the video, I think it's a great idea yes of course I can share a sneak peek with you haha, it became sort of a habit, grab a coffee, log in to Slack, and watch your videos, best Mondays, thank you for sharing cool stuff🌟

[@rano12321]

Cool video dude, you should do the same with Cycles in the future as well.

[@OfirGardy]

Thank you Raphael! very cool rundown and execution at the end. I'd try to replicate in 3dsmax.

[@SilverwingVFX]

Thank you very much. Appreciate to hear that you like the bonus at the end! It should be repeatable in all Octane addon versions and probably in other renderers too!

[@SidharthGanguly]

This is super insightful! Thank you so much Raphael!

[@SilverwingVFX]

Fantastic to hear that. I very much appreciate your positive feedback!

[@_Sevenmine_]

🔟 🙌Gradient Node 🙌

[@SilverwingVFX]

Ha ha nice. Thank you very much for your comment ✨🔟✨

[@davehedgehog9795]

Class tutorial as per usual!

[@SilverwingVFX]

Thank you very much. Highly appreciated 🙌✨

[@yungbuttermilch]

Hey Rafael, thanks as always! Not sure if you already covered this but I would love to get a deep dive into then Standard Surface material. I opened it once or twice but it seemed rather unintuitive and I ended up using the other materials instead. I got that it allows even more detailed configuration but there seems to be a lack of information in Silverwing quality out there 😅

[@SilverwingVFX]

Hey hey, super nice seeing your comment here. Thank you very much for your suggestion! I should indeed make a video about that at some point as the question pops up every now and then. The Standard Surface is a compatibility driven choice. It´s not something one needs to use and you have the same (if not more) options in the Universal Material. When I say compatibility I am speaking of the integration of other render engines into the Render Network by Otoy. Both Redshift and Arnold are using the same type of Standard Surface. The idea here is that an Artist at some point can just switch the render engine and still have access to all the materials he did in the other one. So Otoy brought in the Standard Surface as well as the Standard Volume to mimic those shaders in Octane. Also it has the benefit for RS and Arnold artists coming over to Octane to have a familiar interface that they can work with right away. So in that sense it is not necessary to know the standard surface as Octane user. Though it also does not hurt, and this is why I possibly making a tut about it. Thank you again for your unput and a great start into the week to you 🙌

[@alextorhan]

Very informative! As always cool!

[@SilverwingVFX]

Thank you very much for your great comment. I always appreciate nice feedback 🙌

[@samoxinvik]

🔟 Thank you for your video! Great information as always.

[@SilverwingVFX]

And thank you for your great comment. Amazing to hear your positive feedback 🙌

[@drbolick]

Thank you so much for sharing!

[@SilverwingVFX]

You are very welcome🙌

[@masonbakalekos5153]

I’m using plasticity with Octane C4D right now and would love some tutorials!

[@SilverwingVFX]

Thank you very much for your comment and your input 🙌

[@berndpoffel290]

Great video! Plasticity content from you would be awesome.

[@SilverwingVFX]

Thank you very much for your comment and your feedback. Much appreciated 🙌

[@Jimioc123]

You are the best! So engaging and well explained. I hope one day we run into each other in a pub and I can buy you a beer!

[@SilverwingVFX]

Thank you very much. Super nice to hear you like it! Would be awesome to meet people in the pub that habe seen my tuts ha ha ha.

[@videoflow1694]

Super

[@SilverwingVFX]

Thank you very much!

[@EgoMotionCG]

Thank you!

[@SilverwingVFX]

Also thank you 🙌✨

[@cemgulpunk]

🔟 It helps a lot to show the same topic in 2 applications. Blender started to look more attractive after watching your videos. 🔟

[@SilverwingVFX]

Thank you very much for your comment. Great to hear that 🙌 I think it really depends on the person as I also have heard that I should first do the one software and then the other so the viewer does not have to see both. I am personally with you and find it always nice to have a comparison point. This makes me learn faster.

[@cemgulpunk]

@@SilverwingVFX exactly

[@Jackye-x4g]

Very fond of your videos！Have you ever used texture paint mode in Blender Octane? I'm experiencing crashes when trying to create a new material in a texture slots.

[@SilverwingVFX]

Hey there and thank you very much for your comment. I have not uses Texture Paint in Blender. So I unfortunately can not say anything about it. If you are having problems I encourage you to write a report in the Blender section on the Otoy forums.

[@Rayko-GFX]

🔟

[@SilverwingVFX]

Thank youuu ✨🙏🔟🙏✨

[@shaikshoaib44]

Good video. Please explain about octane lights they don't have spread settings like redshift and working with gradents in lights with projection mapping is quite hard.

[@Jackye-x4g]

Try Analytical Light in Octane 2023

[@SilverwingVFX]

Thank you very much. Glad you liked it! I get you, I have the same gripe. As has been mentioned by Jackye, you can use the analytical lights to get the spread parameter in Octane. But those have their own sets of other problems, so I barely use them. What I use most of the time is the "Spotlight Distribution" node inside the Distribution slot of a light. It´s easy to control and very straight forward. Though you get longer render times (more noise) the more you focus the light. For normal cone like spot light behavior this works great. If you want to have parallel light rays as with spread set to 0 in RS, this is almost impossible to render. I hope this helped you a bit! I wish you a great start into the week 🙌

[@Stinger-x6e]

thanks

[@SilverwingVFX]

You are very welcome 🙌

[@eliprenten7066]

It may be an odd request but I'd be interested in getting a better view of how you learn(ed) all the tools you use. The understanding of octane and 3D in general is so deep that I wonder where you even got the knowledge from. And I saw you quickly progressing with Blender and Plasticity for example, being a quick learner and great teacher. Intelligence, self discipline and experience will be part of that but I feel like you approach these things in a certain efficient way many people wouldn't.

[@SilverwingVFX]

Hey Eli. Not an odd request at all. Thank you very much for your curiosity! So I´ll dive right in: 1: Long term experience. I am doing this for over 20 Years now. And I have been doing it almost exclusively. So almost nothing else 😇 So much time dedicated to one goal has to get you somewhere. 2: Technical curiosity. I always hat a curiosity about how stuff works. Before I began 3D while still in School, I was really interested in photography and learned as much as I could from brochures and books (there was no Internet back then) This continued with 3D later on. I was really curious how the technical side behind the UI looks and what algorithms etc. were used. 3: Searching Knowledge. By reading technical papers or attending conferences and speaking to the right people you can understand a whole lot more how all this stuff works. Of course there (unfortunately) is not a single source that contains all the knowledge... I gathered it from a lot of different sources over a lot of time. I think learning quick in my area is just because I have a lot of technical knowledge already. So I know what I want to do exactly and just have to search for it. Also I am not using a new software all of a sudden. I have worked with other CAD modelers which gave me somewhat of an understanding what tools to use and where to go. Also I used Blender before. Just not in that deep capacity. So it looks like I am learning a software in a couple of weeks. But in reality I have tinkered around with e.g. Blender for multiple Years now. P.s. I don´t think I am intelligent 😇 I think I am rather stupid. It´s just I have gathered so much knowledge over the years already so it is easy for me to categorize and memorize new things within my brains 3D knowledge archive. I am saying that I am rather stupid as I am not a fast learner at all in other areas and I am constantly forgetting stuff there. So my 🧠 is just trained mostly on one thing. Doing 3D. Not sure if that´s the information you were searching for. If you have additional questions about it. Please feel free to ask! Cheers and a great start into the weekend to you!

[@eliprenten7066]

@@SilverwingVFX The man that keeps giving, thank you for the humble explanation! This definitely puts things into perspective and I can see how getting to know 1 thing deeply helps out with learning the other software more easily, knowing what to look out for in the new environments. So it isn't superpowers after all lol, just a lot of dedication but we could already tell by your wonderful content

[@Nyatsuru]

Don't underestimate the work of a discord server but I would love to join it :D 🔟

[@SilverwingVFX]

Thank you very much for your comment. Yeah that´s why I was hesitant before. But I have the feeling the community is lacking a bit. It was closer in the beginning when I started out making those videos regularly. But it´s of course also a think if people actually want the 100th discord server to join ha ha.

[@RomaVFX]

Hello my friend! Great tutorials! It was a moment with round corners node. Is it possible to bake this as normals? I know blender can do it, is it possible to bake this round edges as normal map texture in octane? Thank you!

[@SilverwingVFX]

Hey hey. And thank you vey much for your comment! I actually have not tried. Let me try this here. one sec... Yes, it seems to work. If course you have to have proper UVs on your object to do it. But once you have, you can then bake down the Rounded Edges shading normals into a map 🙌 Might be worth a real quick tip at some point. Thank you very much for your idea and therefore inspiring me 💪

[@itinsideitinside-rv8pk]

I want it.. Silver Wing Cup... Oh my god..

[@SilverwingVFX]

Ha ha ha. Yes it is 😄 😅 Unfortunately I do not have a merch store for now 😬

[@ObscureHedgehog]

5:20 How is the rendered viewport mirroring your actions from the solid viewport?!? 😲😲😲

[@SilverwingVFX]

Thank you very much for your comment! Ha ha, some one else had exactly the same question. In essence it´s very simple. I am just inside a camera in both of the views (Numpad Zero) and to not jump out of the camera on movement I enabled "Camera to View" in the Camera properties panel. I have a part where I go over that in my Blender for C4D users video: kzbin.info/www/bejne/qInWaJaOlLiGbZo

[@МиколаТовкмак]

🎉❤

[@SilverwingVFX]

🙏 🙌

[@MrKezives]

Hello! Nice vídeo! How do you match the view in both windows in blender? Is it Using camera view?

[@SilverwingVFX]

Hey there and thank you very much for your nice comment. As you said I am using a camera in Blender to have those views synced by hitting "Camera to View" in the Camera properties panel. I have a part where I go over that in my Blender for C4D users video: kzbin.info/www/bejne/qInWaJaOlLiGbZo

[@MrKezives]

@@SilverwingVFX ohh that's a nice trick!! Haha thanks for the attention, love your videos!

[@Ricardo-de9ju]

How would you mix two materials with displacements and use vertex painting to mask them out in Octane? Man, that's a watershed moment for me, but I haven't found out how to do it yet.

[@SilverwingVFX]

Hey hey and thank you very much for your comment. Sorry to take the wind out of your sails... Unfortunately Displacement Maps, even when set to vertex displacement, do not support vertex maps. So you are rather limited when working with Displacement in Octane. Texture displacement is relying on pixel values. So the default Displacement is even more restrictive. You would need to bake your Vertex Maps out on your UVs (and that of course requires the Object to have a good UV set) You can do all sort if things using Vertex Maps, but when it comes down to Displacement Octane works best with UVs and prepared Displacement textures. Not so much procedural there unfortunately. If you however figure out a way, let me know. I am always curious!

[@Ricardo-de9ju]

Hi, thanks for getting back. Yeah, maybe it works best alongside Substance Painter, then you going to turn out with a single map. Do you have a tutorial to point out how to bake Vertex Maps? What is the downside of that? @@SilverwingVFX

[@Ricardo-de9ju]

@@SilverwingVFX But Octane does support mix two materials or more with displacements? We could use body paint which allow us to paint seamless mask.

[@SilverwingVFX]

@@Ricardo-de9ju Thank you for your answer. Yeah I have a tutorial on map baking. It´s not specifically for vertex maps. But you can also use it for that. The downside for that is that it involved extra steps including VU unwrapping your object. The advantage of non procedural workflows is always that they are more robust and also better translatable to other engines. Here´s the baking tut: kzbin.info/www/bejne/nZStf4qqfpyiq8U

[@SilverwingVFX]

​@@Ricardo-de9ju No. You always have to use the displacement in the mix node. As far as I know the displacements on the materials are ignored if you are using a mix. Though there are workarounds for that if you are using Vertex displacement. Unfortunately this is rather resource hungry as it´s mesh based. If you are using vertex displacement you can put into your displacement whatever you want (all but dirt and vertex maps for some reason) So you can use a mix node to use the same shader that you use to mix both of your materials on your "Mix Amount" slot and then pipe that result into the displacement. Hopefully this was understandable 😇

[@yashraj8773]

can you help me in exporting the vertex map from C4d to blender?

[@SilverwingVFX]

Hey there Yash, you can export an Alembic from C4D. There click on the settings gear icon and then chose to export vertex maps (or vertex colors if you use those) It will show up as face color attribute in Blender. You might want to also convert from face corner to vertex as I do in the video to make it accessible by Blender Octane. Hope this helps! Cheers, Raphael

[@pixelasm]

4:17 never heard of plasticity before, wonder why you chose exactly that software over another CAD modeller ...

[@meowkoos]

Plasticity is on hype now and it's interface simplified so much compared to CAD soft, even their slogan is "CAD for artists"

[@SilverwingVFX]

Hey hey, super nice seeing you here. Yes Plasticity is pretty hyped at the moment. It´s basically what Fusion 360 was a couple of Years back. But with the focus on CAD for 3D artists. What really helped me there is that a lot of Blender shortcuts work in there. So as I recently deep dove into blender I was feeling right at home in a really short period of time. What led to my decision to pick it up was that the licensing is a small one time fee for a perpetual version that can be used without internet access. And also that Fusion 360, which I used to conform CAD Data for my clients every couple of months before had its subscription price increased by 200% Which was not sustainable for me.

[@kkokook5654]

Hello❤. I hope in a video you will briefly mention the sportlight_octane lamp in C4D. I find it very difficult to control when lighting a subject. or contrast with the background panel. there are a lot of videos about this lighting in Blender but I seem to see very few people showing it in C4D.

[@SilverwingVFX]

Hey hey, and thank you very much four your comment. Actually all of the nodes in my video are for materials and shading. Not so much for lights. Just to be sure what you are talking about. Are you talking about the Octane Spotlight Distribution node? Or the Octane Volume spotlight? What´s your difficulty with it? Maybe it´s worth exploring for me making a real quick tip about it! Cheers and an awesome start into this week to you 🙌

[@kkokook5654]

@@SilverwingVFX 😘Hello, I will ask a more specific question once I have nailed down my specific question. Sorry for my short time using C4D. Because when I learned about that light, I found that very few people used it. Thank you very much for your previous replies. I relied on it, luckily I found answers to most of my questions.

[@PnoMate]

somebody know how to read houdini attribut in blender octane ?

[@SilverwingVFX]

I have not tried it in Blender. But generally, if you save a float or color attribute in Houdini and save it as alembic, Blender should be able to read that in as Vertex Weight or Vertex Color attributes. Then you can use the Attribute node in Octane to translate those to a Shader.

[@paulatreides1354]

why c4d octane is awesome and blender octane .well i don't to be rude ...

[@SilverwingVFX]

Ha ha, thank you for your input. I think it´s not that bad. It has some quirks here and there yes, but so does the C4D one. Thou I agree, that the C4D version is more polished!

[@stilfuchs8031]

🔟

[@SilverwingVFX]

Yaaaaay ✨🔟✨ Dankeeee