Yes, the old custom shader network is back and bigger than ever!

Well, bigger in one sense, anyways; it's actually gotten significantly simpler, even if it technically has more nodes now. I decided I didn't like those old "fur textures" I used. Of course, since the network was designed for flexibility and to easily apply to new models, you can see what the old shader model, (both with and without the fur texture) looks like when applied to the newer model!

Key differences and similarities in the improved network:

[+] Currently uses the "temp" Ambient Occlusion shaders! I decided I didn't like the older MISSShaders I had in the old network. They work alright with the fur texture, but they lack the detail and variety that the AO temp shaders have honed over time. You can see the Ambient Occlusion nodes, which generate the primary red, black, and white shaders for the new look in the red box. As you can see, they're a bit of a complicated network in their own right. For each of the three AO-hosting phongE nodes (shown as black spheres) there's about 4 AO nodes. The AO node that has another AO node plugging into it provides the diffuse color property, while the other two provide the PhongE's specular color and reflective color. These three plug into two blender nodes that are, once again driven by texture mappings. Speaking of which...

[+] Moar Texture maps! I've got maps coming out the wazoo! Separate, UV-oriented greyscale texture maps once again detail how each shader is applied to the model, providing body shapes like eyebrows, socks 'n gloves! But now there's more of 'em! Check out that green box! That's 6 texture map files with associated nodes, plus two more in the red box! That's a total of 8 8129x8129 texture maps! That's hella slow to render! That little face in the lower right corner took like 7 minutes to render! Then again, the older shader network next to it, with MISS and fur textures, to 35 minutes in the same environment and render settings! Woo! 30 minutes shaved off the old render time!

[+] That blue box is the blender-utility nodes cascading. They handle layering on the details specified by further texture maps, like the eyebrows and the lining around the eyes. These generally have their own, very simple shaders although sometimes they'll share shaders. Under the old version, texture maps for the lips and nose were combined into one and there were no eyebrows. I decided the shaders for the lips and nose needed to be different (they're still being worked.)

The gold asterisk sits by the final node, which is still the same as it was under the old network.

[+] That bunch of nodes above the blue box are the shader network that creates the look of the paw pads. Yes, just the pads. I rather like how the details work on them, but I've had that one together for a while now! It's almost as complicated as the main AO shaders!



This network is actually one of the things I really need to address in a future week-cycle. These improvements help a lot, but there are new and better ways to go about these sorts of complicated setups. Mental Ray mila nodes and Maya's layered shader are two of the directions I need to investigate. Mila in particular has the potential to make things drastically faster! Speaking of speed, those titanic (and yet some how unsatisfying small) 8k by 8k texture maps kind of drag on the interface some times. Maya's viewport 2.0 seems to want to come up with a perfect swatch sphere using all those textures, despite not really being all that helpful in this particular situation.