Tips and Tutorials for creating materials!?

[Numb69]

I'm looking for some tutorials or useful sites that can show/teach how to create custom materials and explain properly how things work.
Like other then the basic phong,lambert..I don't really know how to create let's say brushed metal,plastic or various materials.I have the mia_presets wich are awesome, I've been looking into the architectural material too. If someone knows of a site/tutorial or can enlighten me on the subject would be much appreciated!!! I really wanna improve my rendering/shading skills

[Rork]

Hi,

I suggest reading up on the very extensive mia_material information.
It's in your SI install: C:/Program Files/Autodesk/Softimage_version/Doc/mental_ray/shaders/architectural/arch_mtl.html

You mention the mia presets, I assume you found these?

Just open up the PPG for one of the presets, and check with the manual what it does.

For creating materials it all depends on what you're trying to achieve, sometimes a 'simple' mia setup can do the trick, sometimes a complicated rendertree setup is neccessary.
Hard to tell from the beginning. Check out the caffeine abuse blog for great tips.

rob

[Hirazi Blue]

Maybe someone should unearth Kim Aldis' Render Tree tutorials as a lot of the knowledge in that series was/is IMHO fundamentally valuable to any user wanting to utilize the power of the Render Tree...

[Numb69]

Cool,Thx guys!

[Hirazi Blue]

Maybe someone should unearth Kim Aldis' Render Tree tutorials

Actually (silly me ), they have been unearthed recently already: look for the "Kim Aldis Series" in this list

[Numb69]

Awesome! thx a lot dude this some good stuff, I just started looking at some of Kim Aldis vids,really good!

Btw I wanted to ask if anyone had a clue where I could find this http://www.xsibase.com/commercial/videos.php?detail=942 it looks pretty good,but it's also old and I wasnt able to find it anywhere

Moderator edit: please use the URL tags - HB

[Hirazi Blue]

Sadly, they aren't available anymore legally AFAIK...

[Numb69]

That's too bad ..thx anyways ;)

[Rork]

All the 3DTutorial training was available for a while on redi-vivus, but after the request of Joe Salzman himself it was removed from the list for further distribution.

Although there's still very useful information in those videos, most of them will not run properly anymore on Vista and up, so if you find them ymmv. Also, they don't work on a virtual pc either.

rob

[Numb69]

Ohh well..