alShaders Arnold 5 transition version

[Anders Langlands]

Arnold 5 presents a great new collection of standard shaders that covers most of the same functionality as alShaders did previously, only officially supported and most likely better written. As such I do not intend to make an Arnold 5 version of the shaders. 

Several people have asked for a version to help transitioning from Arnold 4/alShaders to Arnold 5/standard. I've made a version which should help with that. The pattern and utility nodes should function as normal, but the surface shaders (alSurface and alHair) will just render as flat red - the idea being that you can still access the parameters and rehook shading networks piece by piece to use the new standard library. 

You can download the shaders here:

• Windows
• Linux
• OS X

Cheers,

Anders

[Zeno Pelgrims]

Ah, I am sad to hear this - but I understand the reasons related to support.

Cryptomatte/separated spec lobes/ids are all quicker things to implement, but I'm gutted to see the directional SSS fade away with alsurface :-(

In terms of usability, I really feel like it's much harder to get the look I want using the empirical SSS in A5. Is it possible? I believe the engineers at solid angle that we could. I just remember the statement that won me over to Arnold years ago - that cpu time is less costly than artist time. I feel like the current evolution of the SSS model has contradicted this ideology.

I would really love to see directional sss, in the user friendly way it was implemented in alsurface as an option in the standard surface shader. Long shot, but I feel like it is too great an improvement to not say anything about it.

Thanks guys! Keep up the hard work!

Zeno

On 23 Apr 2017, at 12:16, Alex <al...@helmet.no> wrote:

I also wish for a new version of alShaders for the reasons mentioned above!

The refraction in alShaders also has more choices, and I find it easier to achieve the look I want with it.

Crytomatte support is also a huge thing :)

Alexander Somma
tlf. 958 00 508

HELMET
www.helmet.no

søn. 23. apr. 2017 kl. 12:08 skrev Alex Oddbratt <alex.o...@gmail.com>:

Not to mention the extremely useful features the alShader has that is at this moment sorely lacking in the new aiStandardSurface shader.

- Built-in separation of the two specs into their own AOVs.
- Built-in simple and straight forward lightgroup support, ie not having to deal with custom AOVs, LPEs and collections if you just want to split lights into layers.
- And probably most important, built-in support for IDs on the shaders making it simple and easy to output a lot of mattes/masks without having to do a lot of manual custom AOV setups.

I'm hoping these or similar features are planned for future releases, but as we currently use all of them in our productions, it's going to make switching over to Arnold 5

quite tough as we would have to rewrite parts of our pipeline to somehow create an automate workaround for these awesome features that alShaders made so easy to use.

On Sun, Apr 23, 2017 at 9:46 AM, Brett Sinclair <sinclai...@hotmail.com> wrote:

The new Arnold surface is really good. I do agree the sss needs direct sss and the multiple lobes. At the moment it feels there is a front and back but no middle scatter. Sorry my terminology for all of this is poor. Maybe its a radius and scale setting we have to tweak till we hit the sweet spot. I felt it was quicker getting there with alsurface though.

It is using empirical and it would be nice if solidangle will allow us to switch between directional and empirical. From what I saw in my tests the surface got blobby because it wasn't calculating the individual pores.

*Typed with my thumbs.

-------- Original message --------
From: Daniel Hennies <de...@gmx.de>
Date: 2017/04/23 9:04 AM (GMT+02:00)
To: ht...@solidangle.com
Cc: alsh...@googlegroups.com, The Maya-to-Arnold plugin <mt...@solidangle.com>, KtoA <kt...@solidangle.com>, c4d...@solidangle.com, The Softimage-to-Arnold plugin <si...@solidangle.com>
Subject: [MtoA] Re: [HtoA] alShaders Arnold 5 transition version

Thank you Anders,

I understand well the intention and honor your opinion. Still hoping for your port of alSurface for v5 when you have time.

Given that even Vray adapted your shaders to stay competitive, it would be a shame for Arnold to stay behind in that regard.

Once the new standard surface surpasses the need for alSurface I am all golden, but the time is not yet I fear.

We are all set for directional sss with multiple lobes for instance on daily work. So far I couldnt match up the look and control in the new standard surface (which uses empirical sss I assume)

Also in my quick tests, alSurface still renders faster for transmissive setups.

One thing I loved Arnold for was the openess for third party shaders and I take it granted that this added to its success among the community. 

OSL underlines this I guess.

Please give it another shot when ever you have the time:)

Cheers and thanks for all your work, Anders!

Daniel

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Med vennlig hilsen

Alexander Somma

Director / VFX Supervisor

+47 958 00 508

HELMET AS, Nedre Ila 39

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[Stephan Wagemann]

Thanks Anders, for the Arnold 5 pattern and utility nodes. :) 

[Marcel Reinhard]

Guys, I really think it'd be great to come up with some example renders/scenes/settings that show the cases where you don't manage to achieve the SSS look you want.

Brecht already talked about their approach and that for the moment they didn't find the separation in different SSS colors necessary because they could reproduce the look with corresponding radii settings. Maybe you are stuck with the current approach and just need to get used to a new set of parameters, which was exactly the same case when Anders first released alSurface.

As for the empirical SSS, the biggest problem until A5 was that it couldn't​ be included in the light groups, which now comes for free. I think that you are also forgetting the cost in rendering time of the directional approach. The empirical profiles are already really good and a lot faster to evaluate.

Also you can stop writing about crypto support and have a look at the associated thread.

Thanks a lot, Anders, for your continuing work for the community!

--

[Kopa Kopatych]

In the previous branch, I applied the results of the difference between the two mods, with completely identical settings on both sides

воскресенье, 23 апреля 2017 г., 17:59:06 UTC+3 пользователь Marcel Reinhard написал:

[Mads Drøschler]

Aloha,

I'm testing up against 3ds max, all seems fine so far, but I can't get Crypto working, the names and channels are written to the test exr I am using, but I can't call any pixels, post.
I wonder why that is?

- Mads

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[Sachin Shrestha]

Hey Anders,

Thanks for this version. It is very thoughtful of you to share this so quickly. Will make it a lot easier to port now.

Cheers,

Sachin

On Sun, 23 Apr 2017 at 21:06 Rico <ri...@ricohofmann.de> wrote:

The OSX link loads the win version. Maybe this is wrong.

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[Anders Langlands]

Also, just to clarify, Jonah is working on a cryptomatte solution which will be better and easier to set up than the Arnold 4 version. We'll release that as a separate package alongside Arnold 5.0.1.0.

[Trẫm Sup]

I copy all content of bịn to the C:\Program Files\MAXON\CINEMA 4D R18\plugins\C4DtoA\shaders an coppy all 

Then I coppy all thes folder of your file to the C:\Program Files\MAXON\CINEMA 4D R18\plugins\C4DtoA

But I still dont see Alsurface or any shader look like standard_surface . Can you help ?!

Vào 02:21:43 UTC+7 Thứ Hai, ngày 24 tháng 4 năm 2017, Anders Langlands đã viết:

[mr.brun...@gmail.com]

Thanks Anders, but the OSX link is pointing to the windows file...

On Sunday, April 23, 2017 at 6:46:58 AM UTC+2, Anders Langlands wrote:

[Anders Langlands]

Hi Sylvain, it's always bloody windows. I've updated the package. The alSurface files should be there now.

On Tue, 25 Apr 2017 at 07:26 Sylvain Berger <sbe...@hybride.com> wrote:

The transitioning version of the alSurface is not available in rc20 is it?
Do I understand this correctly?

The dll can't be found in the bin folder and the shader doesn't show up in Maya.

Sylvain Berger
Hybride Technologies

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[Bret Sampson]

Hi Anders,

I'm still seeing the windows zip when clicking on the OSX link, wierd
Did it relinked elsewhere?

Many Thanks
B

[Anders Langlands]

I see the correct page here. Have you tried clearing your browser cache?

--

[Bret Sampson]

Hi Anders,

Yes I did clear the browser cache, but still no luck.
What I did in the end was paste the link in a fresh page and ended the url at downloads, then I could see the osx .zip in the directory

Cheers
B

[Anders Langlands]

That's really weird. As usual though, you can just grab them directly from bitbucket:

https://bitbucket.org/anderslanglands/alshaders/downloads/alShaders-osx-1.0.0rc20-ai5.0.0.0.tar.gz

On Tue, 2 May 2017 at 17:31 Rico <ri...@ricohofmann.de> wrote:

I'm also seeing only the win version instead the OS X version.

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[Tomas liu]

Hello Anders Langlands 

 alShaders-win-1.0.0rc20-ai5.0 for maya 

All materials can be displayed in the material library

But all the material is errors

The rendering result is just a red monochrome

I do not know why this is so

Please fix these errors

THX

[Anders Langlands]

Hi Tomas, alSurface can't be ported to Arnold 5 at the moment. The node in the transition package is there so that it will load in Maya and let you re-hook your parameters to a standard_surface instead.

Cheers,

Anders.

--

[tyle...@googlemail.com]

Hi Anders,

is there any rough eta on alSurface for v5? Im still sitting in v4 for that very shader;)

Cheers

Daniel

[Jonah Friedman]

AlSurface and AlHair will not be ported to Arnold 5, unless there's been some change I'm unaware of. The transition version exists to allow users to transition to the new standard shaders. (In fact you're replying to an e-mail where Anders is saying this). 

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[Anders Langlands]

Jonah's correct.

The transition version I put up on the website gives you the utility nodes and a dummy version of alSurface and alHair you can use to make rebuilding existing networks with the standard shaders easier (the parameters are there but the shaders themselves will just return solid red).

Jonah's got cryptomatte ready to go in a way you can apply it easily to any shader, and that's just waiting on a new release of Arnold to be made available.

There won't be be an alSurface for Arnold 5 - things have changed so much that doing so would involve a full rewrite. I am working on something that should be pretty cool, but that will look fairly different and I don't have an ETA. I recently moved to New Zealand and I'm currently in London preparing for my wedding, so progress is a little slow :)

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[fatj...@hotmail.com]

Hi Anders,

It's a great disappointment there won't be alShaders for Arnold 5. Otherr missed features are the samples override per lobe, indirect clamp per lobe, and the choice of specular distribution. Sometimes beckmann gives the result you want rather than ggx. And of course the choice of SSS methods. (I really like diffusion).

Can you tell me if they've implemented the fresnel based on microfacet roughness in the new standard surface shader? That was one of the main reasons I went to alShaders.

By the way, welcome to New Zealand ;)

Paul

[Anders Langlands]

I will have something that will have most of those features available at some point. The only thing I can't do is the custom SSS modes.

The standard surface shader now handles fresnel properly too.

[Sergio LoDolce]

I'm curious, why couldn't you do the custom SSS modes? Any reason Solid Angle went with empirical instead of directional for SSS?