Split surface materials

mike9

There are some clothes or items with only one surface to set. In such a case I often would like to split the surface up into seperate surfaces as this would allow the use of iray shaders. But how can I add a new surface element for the item?

Example:

This item has only one surface with the name "Material1". How can I add another "Material" node?

Richard Haseltine

You can use the Geometry Editor tool (from the Tools menu) to seelct Polygons and then assign create a new surface from the seelcted polygons - or assign them to an existing surface, which allows for selecting them in convenient blocks. The right-click menu in the viewport has a lot of options for selection (to grow a selection outwards, for example, rather than having to drag over every polygon) and assignment.

fixmypcmike

http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/42088/tutorial-adding-surfaces-in-ds-with-the-geometry-editor-tool

mike9

Ok thanks. Works different than expected. My plan was to have multiple overlapping surfaces and using textures to determine where one surface ends and the next starts. It looks like only one surface can have assigned a region and the seperation of the surfaces with polygons is rather coarse.

Is there some way to specify the border of the surface with higher detail or let the surfaces overlap?

mike9

Fixmypcmike said:

http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/42088/tutorial-adding-surfaces-in-ds-with-the-geometry-editor-tool

Thanks, I didn't see your post. Very helpfull and it has already the answer.

Materials zones are all or nothing, you can't have a polygon partially in one zone and partially in another. What you could do, if you want a graded blend between two very different materials (say stone to skin as a victim is petrified by one of the gorgons) is use a geometry shell, so effectively you have two copies of the mesh, with the base mesh and the shell having the different materials and then use a transparency map to hide the unneeded portions. You could also use a single mesh, set both materials up in the same Shader Mixer network and use a map to blend the materials.