Hey guys!
I finally got around to remaking the "KoddeShader" from the ground up. Some old features which I found less useful were cut and a few new features I've learned since last time have been added. If you give this shader a go then please share your results or any other feedback.

Some highlight features of this shader:

• 2-pass Transparency support (support for Specular and Reflections on transparent surfaces)
• Fresnel based Specularity and Reflections
• Gloss based Cube Map Mip Level modulation (For blurring, etc)
• Various Skin parameters to mimic "realistic" skin (Blended Normals being one of them)
• Ward Specularity option (Besides regular Phong Specularity)
• Gamma Correction (2.2)

I've been feature creeping and tweaking the UI for quite some time and I think I've found and fixed most issues. I'm calling this version "rev3". Please let me know if you find any issues. Thanks!

Download "KoddeShader_v2.0_rev3.rar"




User guide time! <- Right-click to download

This ended up taking me longer to write than the shader
It's 24 pages filled with example images and useful info on how the shader works.

Let me know if you find any typos or errors. I've gone through it a few times but there's certainly something I've missed.

Enjoy.

cool stuff bro

hot dawg! Looks awesome, kodde!

(tips hat...thanks for sharing it)

Ooh nice, looks great, will look forward to checking it out! Thanks

Thanks Kodde!

Sweet Kodde!

Thanks guys!

Working on a guide for using the shader as we speak.

makes even temp textures look good, but blended normals doesn't like hard edges

Marine> Thanks for sharing.
Hmm, I never actually tried the Blended Normals feature on an object which had hard edges. Makes sense though. This feature is intended to use on surface which are supposed to look like skin. This should probably mean that it won't be that many hard edges.

In your case could you not just make that edge soft? Is there a reason to keep it hard?

Blended normals work with the normal map. Only details present in the normal map will benefit from the effect blended normal gives. In your case I think it seems to work nice, red is much softer and more believable for the eye than black when it comes to skin. At least in my opinion.

Keep at it, looks promising. Do please share future progress on this ;)

Did anyone ever get everything right the first time around?

Anyways, I found that the "Normal Multiplier" attribute did not work with the "Use DXT5nm style Normal Texture" in the rev1 version. I fixed it and updated to rev2 in the main post.

EDIT:

Rev3 is up!

Changes in rev3
-The "Reflection Mip Level Min" and "Reflection Mip Level Max" have been swapped around to hopefully be more clear.
Min now represents a lower mip level value as in higher resolution, the Max now represents a higher mip level value
as in lower resolution.
-The default light with intensity when loading the shader is now Directional 1 instead of Directional 3.

nice job kodde! Will test it soon!

Thanks Bugo.

Working on help documentation as we speak. I'm already at 16 pages filled with useful information and example images. Think I'll end up with 20+ pages. I will have spent more time writing the help docs than the actual shader. Hopefully it will be worth it in the end

providing some sample scenes with this would be really sweet to, like you did with the eye shader. are you ever going to merge the two BTW?

Originally Posted by willy-wilson

providing some sample scenes with this would be really sweet to, like you did with the eye shader. are you ever going to merge the two BTW?

Hey Willy,

Right now I'm working on the help doc which should hopefully be finished tonight. It has lots of good example images and information on all the parameters, etc.

I can probably provide my example scene of Lee Perry-Smiths head as well.

I don't have any plan on merging these two shaders. I realized that I was already pushing the amount of parameters in my old KoddeShader and wanted to be more sparse without loosing the most essential features for this version.

User guide time! <- Right-click to download

Finally finished what ended up taking me longer to write than the shader
It's 24 pages filled with example images and useful info on how the shader works.

Let me know if you find any typos or errors. I've gone through it a few times but there's certainly something I've missed.

Enjoy.

Awesome guide. And awesome shader! Can't wait to try it out

I wanna Max version!

Oh Ohhhh I can't wait to try this, thanks!
(actually, I still need to troubleshoot my problems with actually getting cgfx to work, but that's my problem.)

ivars> Thanks, hope you like it.

zxcman> Mental Mill seems to be able to export for Max also without any major hassles. Thing is I've done quite some editing with Notepad++ after the Mental Mill export so making a Max version wouldn't be that easy for me. Especially since I can't debug it either. Sorry.

Throttlekitty> You're welcome. What's up with not getting cgfx to work? ATI card?


I'll get around to uploading an example scene as willy requested before. I'll try to get it done tonight.

Here's a sample scene with the head I used for most of my examples in the user guide.

There's a Maya 2010 scene in the package. If you have an older version of Maya or for whatever reason cannot load this scene there is also an .obj. If you use the .obj you will have to set up the shader yourself.

Sample Scene Download (v2)

EDIT: Updated the link with a more correct sample scene.

im using maya 2009. and the cubemap i use doesnt show up. like theres no cube reflections at all.the cubemap is in tif format. becuase the dds maps that i try to use couldnt be loaded for some reason?

Hmm, .dds should work. How are you processing them? Or did you download any premade?

Download the example scene I post a few posts up. Try using the included the Cube Map called "cube_neighborhood01.dds". Does it work?

@kodde - I am currently trying the shader in my Maya 2011 x64 in my Windows 7 machine with ATI HD4850 graphics card.After loading the CGFX, i can't select between the two techiniques, the default technique selected is "Transperency_with_diffuse_alpha". So all i see is a light red silhouette of the model.I have gone through the document, don't seem like i am missing anything.I have even tried with the sample model you provided.Same result

Is maya 2011 not supported?

Welcome to tha ati world, funny i got those kind of problems with my ati rigs, never with nvidia one.

Noooooooooo.Any official words? Any alternatives to use the shader with ATI?