Available in TurboCAD Pro, Platinum and Deluxe only
Each material has five categories of parameters you can set: Pattern, Reflectance, Transparency, Texture and Wrapping. Not all categories are used for each material, only those that are relevant.
Note: Materials in TurboCAD is a vast topic unto itself, and cannot be covered fully here. The TurboCAD Community has a web page where you can get much more information: http://www3.turbocadcommunity.com/tiki-index.php?page=Lightworks Another reference is the book Photorealism in TurboCAD Pro, which is available at www.cadcourse.com.
In the Preview section, you can change the shape and orientation of the preview object. Under Options, you can toggle the display of the preview object or desk. If Auto Update is checked, the preview will update each time a change is made (otherwise you must click the Preview button).
The toolbar on the right side of the editor allows you to specify the elements of the preview.
You can navigate within the preview window using the center mouse button.
You can also see approximately how the material will appear on an object by entering a value into the Model Size field. Simply specify a size that is close to the size of the object to which you will be applying the material.Alternately, you can use the selection arrow under the preview.
This will show you exactly how the material will appear on the selected object.
Warning: If the selection arrow is the specified option for the preview object, and no object is selected, you will get a warning that a preview cannot be generated. This will also happen if the selection arrow is the default and you open the Render Manager with no object selected.
Options
The first set of parameters are the Options. This includes the RED file path.
There are also three options:
Double Sided: Will the material be mapped to each side of a facet.
Reflective Caustics: Will Reflective Caustics be calculated and displayed for this material.
Refractive Caustics: Will Refractive Caustics be calculated and displayed for this material.
Pattern
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Note: TurboCAD has several defined patterns, but if you want to apply your own image as a pattern, see Creating a New Material.
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The realistic material shading model uses several basic inputs that are summarized below:
Diffusion | This is the diffuse color / texture information of the material, used in a Lambertian equation. | |
Transmission | This is the transmission color / texture information of the material. The transmission has precedence over the diffusion term for the calculation of energy preservation. | |
Reflection | This is the reflection color / texture information of the material. The reflection has precedence over the diffusion and transparency terms for the calculation of energy preservation. |
These inputs can be modified using special parameters:
Fresnel | The fresnel option is a very powerful term that is used to modulate the amount of reflection emitted by the material based on the angle of the viewing direction with the surface. This must be turned on for all glasses materials. | |
Anisotropic reflectance | This is an extra anisotropic term that can be set to specify anisotropic reflections in the realistic material. Two anisotropy values (anisotropy in U and anisotropy in V) can be set, or texture with at least two channels (red and green) can be set instead, to define a per-pixel anisotropic information. Anisotropy values are in [0.0f, 1.0f]. The larger the value the wider the reflection angle. | |
Anisotropy orientation | This term defines the orientation of the anisotropy. Either a single angular value or a texture with at least one channel (red) defines the value of the rotation angle to apply to the basis used to define the reflectance of the material. Angles are expressed in radians. The read texture value is multiplied by 2*PI to map the usual [0.0,1.0] range to [0.0,2*PI]. | |
Transmission glossiness | This term defines the glossiness value of the material. A single glossiness value or a texture with at least one channel (red) can be used to define the per-pixel transmission glossiness of the material. Glossiness values are in [0.0f,1.0f]. The larger the value the wider the transmission glossiness cone. | |
Transmission scattering | This is an extra absorption term that can be specified for the material transmission. It uses an out-scattering color and an out-scattering scale used to specifiy the amount of energy being absorbed along the path of a ray for each unit length crossed in the model media volume. This is related to Volumetric effects. | |
Reflection fog | This is fade-out term that can be specified for reflections. At a certain distance, the color of the reflection becomes equal to the specified reflection fog color, and any other visible reflection is lost. |
Finally, the realistic material also features surface modifiers, that are detailed below:
Bump map | The bump map of the realistic material affects the surface normal of the geometry at the shaded fragment. | |
Displacement map | The displacement map of the realistic material modifies the surface of the geometry that uses it. See Displacement for details on displacement mapping. |