treebog 2 Posted May 19, 2020 I'm trying to apply a surface and volume shader to a simple liquid (vdb) in htoa. It seems I can't do this without having two separate VDBs (one for the surface, one for the volume). Is there any way to have a shader in arnold with both volume and surface components or is this impossible? Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
schwungsau 272 Posted May 21, 2020 this very confusing question raises 25 more questions. no render in the world will allow you to mix volume and surface shaders..... Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
anim 1,168 Posted May 21, 2020 If renderer allows that it's usually part of a single shader and mostly other way around, the shader is assigned to mesh and the enclosed volume can be shaded uniformly, may potentially work with iso surfaces like sdf also Like octane material has medium input for volumetric shader Or mantra can render geo as uniform volume and also use surface shader depending on dPdz, Bui it involves some render poroperties Not sure what's Arnold's approach though Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
treebog 2 Posted May 21, 2020 3 hours ago, schwungsau said: this very confusing question raises 25 more questions. no render in the world will allow you to mix volume and surface shaders..... Alright thanks, I was confused because the arnold shader network had both a volume and surface node. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
schwungsau 272 Posted May 21, 2020 in Arnold, you can assign a volume shader to a mesh and set the setup size an object property (a arnold parameter) --> Arnold will render it as uniform volume ( if the mesh is closed). but you can not assign a surface shader to volume. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
anim 1,168 Posted May 21, 2020 3 hours ago, schwungsau said: but you can not assign a surface shader to volume. since the talk is about liquid VDB I'm pretty sure it's an SDF, which I recall Arnold can render as iso surface with surface material, I may be mistaken though Share this post Link to post Share on other sites