A few basic material settings for you to try out

As per a post I made regarding the Diffuse/IOR/Reflection/Glossiness settings from the Sheen Calculator I thought I would share them for you to test/try out in your renders. 
Basically this is mimicking the roughness that occurs in reality. RedSDK currently does not take into account the rougher (more matt) a material is using the Glossiness factor so the IOR and Reflection values need to adjust according. 

All these use a diffuse value of 1 as using reflection is does remove the need to reduce it as light behaves better without the burning/glowing of white materials etc. Fresnel ticked (on)!
For speed Select (Matte) in the reflectance settings preset before making the changes on the Advanced tab. So long as you do not pick lit appearance or constant the following will work okay.

---

RedSDK - IOR Curve for Glossiness Plotting:
[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

---

Matt Emulsion walls:
Sheen Level of 2% (Flat) which covers many emulsion paints available.
IOR = 9.326
Frensel = ticked (on)
Reflection RGB = 20,20,20 (grey) (Specular (if you have not enabled the advanced reflection) = 0.078432)
Glossiness = 0.9628

---

Carpets:
Sheen Level of 1% (Flat)
IOR = 9.872
Frensel = ticked (on)
Reflection RGB = 18,18,18 (grey) (Specular (if you have not enabled the advanced reflection) = 0.070589)
Glossiness = 0.9849

---

Furniture Eggshell Paints:
Sheen Level of 40% (Eggshell)
IOR = 1.827
Frensel = ticked (on)
Reflection RGB = 118,118,118 (grey) (Specular (if you have not enabled the advanced reflection) = 0.462746)
Glossiness = 0.3089

---

Furniture Satin Paints, Lacquers and plastics:
Sheen Level of 65% (Semi Gloss)
IOR = 1.689
Frensel = ticked (on)
Reflection RGB = 182,182,182 (grey) (Specular (if you have not enabled the advanced reflection) = 0.713726)
Glossiness = 0.0761

---

Shiny Ceramics:
Sheen Level of 80% (Gloss)
IOR = 1.739
Frensel = ticked (on)
Reflection RGB = 221,221,221 (grey) (Specular (if you have not enabled the advanced reflection) = 0.866667)
Glossiness = 0.0117

To Be Continued.....

This is pure gold buddy! Cheers

Just waiting for some free tinkering time, to play with all this Dazzy goodness!!!!

Daz, we bow to your greatness!

Mingerz wrote:Hi Daz,

I thought I'd give you some feedback on your material settings. You are doing some incredible work. I have attached two images (Forget the lens flare on one). I have used your settings on walls ceilings and furniture (Plastic for the furniture) on the one with the crappy rug but the spotlight reflection doesn't ring true ( Spot light lens set to lit appearance 0.4 diffuse) Maybe I'm doing something wrong. The other image is with your carpet settings all be it with a .2 bump map, maybe I should shift this back to 0.1 but with stock ArtiCAD settings for the furniture (Plastic). Your comments would be greatly appreciated.

Hi Mingerz
Looking Good...

The material is correct but one thing I was going to mention is really the lit appearance should be behind glass. Glass actually is not completely clear and the default of 0.99 + the colour in diffuse is not really low enough. Lowering it to 90% is what Many glass companies rate the transparency by.
I normally change the Window Glass Colour to complete White (as the colour has a influence on the colour transmission and how much light it lets through, Diffuse to zero, and Transparency to 0.87.
The trouble with the default spot light graphics is tshould really have a part for the lit appearance and a glass face with thickness. No bulb is raw in reality and really affect the tone mapping as everything around light it is scaled down.. I sometimes either use my own *.skp file or ass a round disc just below with a transparent value of 0.45 to help attenuate the tone mapping as this stop the tone mapping "seeing" the lit appearance fully at 255 RGB...

From Wiki:
"The most characteristic property of glass is transparency; the percentage of light transmission of window glass is 83–90 percent, and of optical glass, up to 99.95 percent."

These look so realistic! Really impressive, just shows you how subtle texture differences and tweaks make all the difference

Darrel wrote:

Mingerz wrote:Hi Daz,

I thought I'd give you some feedback on your material settings. You are doing some incredible work. I have attached two images (Forget the lens flare on one). I have used your settings on walls ceilings and furniture (Plastic for the furniture) on the one with the crappy rug but the spotlight reflection doesn't ring true ( Spot light lens set to lit appearance 0.4 diffuse) Maybe I'm doing something wrong. The other image is with your carpet settings all be it with a .2 bump map, maybe I should shift this back to 0.1 but with stock ArtiCAD settings for the furniture (Plastic). Your comments would be greatly appreciated.

Hi Mingerz
Looking Good...

The material is correct but one thing I was going to mention is really the lit appearance should be behind glass. Glass actually is not completely clear and the default of 0.99 + the colour in diffuse is not really low enough. Lowering it to 90% is what Many glass companies rate the transparency by.
I normally change the Window Glass Colour to complete White (as the colour has a influence on the colour transmission and how much light it lets through, Diffuse to zero, and Transparency to 0.87.
The trouble with the default spot light graphics is tshould really have a part for the lit appearance and a glass face with thickness. No bulb is raw in reality and really affect the tone mapping as everything around light it is scaled down.. I sometimes either use my own *.skp file or ass a round disc just below with a transparent value of 0.45 to help attenuate the tone mapping as this stop the tone mapping "seeing" the lit appearance fully at 255 RGB...

From Wiki:
"The most characteristic property of glass is transparency; the percentage of light transmission of window glass is 83–90 percent, and of optical glass, up to 99.95 percent."

Thanks for your input Daz. I'm now in the process of rendering having made all the changes you have suggested. On top of that, I've never used displacement mapping before so I've checked that on the textured surfaces to see how that looks. Will post the render when it finishes in a couple of weeks!!

PS The definition of frustration is, realising you have incorrectly spaced your spotlights, halfway through a killer render!

Mingerz wrote:
Thanks for your input Daz. I'm now in the process of rendering having made all the changes you have suggested. On top of that, I've never used displacement mapping before so I've checked that on the textured surfaces to see how that looks. Will post the render when it finishes in a couple of weeks!!

PS The definition of frustration is, realising you have incorrectly spaced your spotlights, halfway through a killer render!

You will have to edit it afterwards... something like this eh...

I hope you have edited all the materials as the dark grained wood fronts look like they are still the default mats.

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]
Okay....Made some changes. I tried your idea Daz of using glass below the spotlights but I was getting weird artifacts (Maybe some kind of light refraction) so I deleted those.

Image is Daz highest, Daz materials for wall, ceiling, dark pine textured finish (Waiting on your gloss settings) and window glass. Spots are .4 lit appearance with grey lens. Window lit appearance as per Daz calc.

I know I need to tidy up the front edge of the rug. I've used a bump map of .2 and displacement mapping for that item only. Hell..if you can tick something it must be good!!

Finally, I changed the diffuse setting from 1 to .5 (Default with ArtiCAD is always 1) for the dark pine which better reflects the actual product. Though that Noob, Charles who I think does our brochure has various tones for this product. Could be the ArtiCAD Munchkins...sorry Charles. Gotta say though our brochure images are is it real or CAD? ....It's that good! Whoever does the bed covers is a master!

Anyways, I thought I'd put this up for comments and hopefully critical ones as I'm in that strange place, where it's more important to get the image right than the sale...how did that happen!

Mingerz wrote:
Okay....Made some changes. I tried your idea Daz of using glass below the spotlights but I was getting weird artifacts (Maybe some kind of light refraction) so I deleted those.

Image is Daz highest, Daz materials for wall, ceiling, dark pine textured finish (Waiting on your gloss settings) and window glass. Spots are .4 lit appearance with grey lens. Window lit appearance as per Daz calc.

I know I need to tidy up the front edge of the rug. I've used a bump map of .2 and displacement mapping for that item only. Hell..if you can tick something it must be good!!

Finally, I changed the diffuse setting from 1 to .5 (Default with ArtiCAD is always 1) for the dark pine which better reflects the actual product. Though that Noob, Charles who I think does our brochure has various tones for this product. Could be the ArtiCAD Munchkins...sorry Charles. Gotta say though our brochure images are is it real or CAD? ....It's that good! Whoever does the bed covers is a master!

Anyways, I thought I'd put this up for comments and hopefully critical ones as I'm in that strange place, where it's more important to get the image right than the sale...how did that happen!

Looks a lot better... highlights on edges of the curved door (especially the LH one) make it look more natural. The sheen showing in the back of the open shelves make it look less flat and it gives more depth to the render.

The floor you could of used the same reflectance settings as per what you used for the cabs... Lowering the diffuse from 1 to 0.5 is really masking either a poor texture image and/or not having enough reflection. A fully diffuse material can bounce to much of it's own colour around especially with the sun beating down on them. The default value of diffuse at 1 is correct as this give the render engine the total texture colour. In TurboCAD there is no option to lower the diffuse value so as all you are doing lowering it is reducing the colour saturation which does match really the textures you are using...

Be interesting to see the brochure you mention... are the visuals available on your website??

Edit:
Quick tests...
Defaults with a pine floor texture, Matt walls and ceiling, plastic floor, low gloss skirting and window frame.. very orange eh:
[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

Using the Sheen Levels above, 2% Sheen walls and Ceiling, 65% sheen floor, skirting and window frame.. More balanced and more natural:
[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

Darrel wrote:

Be interesting to see the brochure you mention... are the visuals available on your website??

Yep...there are quite a few across the product ranges. https://www.hammonds-uk.com/

Cool Photos/CGI Mingerz...

Here is an example of the increasing the topcoat thickness on the Pine Flooring.. Try these and see what you think...:

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]
Now with plastic floor.. I think I also need to find some more seamless wooden floors. Why is it so hard to get good ones?

Mingerz wrote:[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]
Now with plastic floor.. I think I also need to find some more seamless wooden floors. Why is it so hard to get good ones?

That's more like it...Sold..

Daz, just jumping back on this thread after posting on KFF Forum. With Articad V21, how do these settings translate?

Sheen Level of 2% (Flat)
IOR 
Frensel 
Reflection RGB
Glossiness 

Jaynehiddleston wrote:Daz, just jumping back on this thread after posting on KFF Forum. With Articad V21, how do these settings translate?

Sheen Level of 2% (Flat)
IOR 
Frensel 
Reflection RGB
Glossiness 

Hi Jayne,

They are all the same as I remember.... Can you screen grab the Material Editor as I do not have ArtiCAD installed anymore so I can see if they have changed it majorly?
I know Joe mentioned he had added them to his own material settings so it should still translate...

From the first post in this topic and what the Calculator generates:
Matt Emulsion walls:
Sheen Level of 2% (Flat) which covers many emulsion paints available.
IOR = 9.326
Frensel = ticked (on)
Reflection RGB = 20,20,20 (grey) (Specular (if you have not enabled the advanced reflection) = 0.078432)
Glossiness = 0.9628