I apologise if this has already been asked before, but I just wanted some clarification. I'm currently following the Fundamentals of Shading course, then it occurred to me that I had watched a video by Blender Guru last year about Principled BSDF, and I got a bit confused. Is the methods shown in the Fundamentals of Shading course the older way of the doing things, and Principled BSDF the newer way of doing things? If so do I need to learn this, and if not is there a course on the website for Principled BSDF? One last question, when you've used nodes to apply certain material effects such as Fresnel, etc - do these qualities get carried over when exporting them to other engines? Sorry. Very confused and would appreciate some explanation.
All I know is that the principled shader is more physically accurate.
learning the basics/fundamentals never hurts...
the Principled shader is a conglomeration of the little/fundamental nodes...
Welcome Richard, great question. We do have lessons on PBR shading and the Principled shader here: https://cgcookie.com/lesson/pbr-introduction
While it definitely makes basic shading much easier, it doesn't do everything, so you'll still need to know how other Cycles nodes work and how to mix them, which is exactly what the Fundamentals course covers. I would recommend finishing the fundamentals course, then watching the non-Principled PBR videos, and then the Principled video last so that you'll have a good understanding of what's going on behind the scenes and can make any material you can think of.
One last question, when you've used nodes to apply certain material effects such as Fresnel, etc - do these qualities get carried over when exporting them to other engines?
Unfortunately not, shaders and properties of one render engine won't carry over to a different engine since all of them use different approximations and variables to come to the end result.
Thank you so much for your replies. I shall go back and do the other courses as well then.
About shaders not being exported over to game engines, I take it you then use properties within their engines to add their shaders? Does that information get laid on top the information from texture maps?
This is a nice tutorial to get the bigger picture about computer graphics. It helps youto see the bigger picture what goes on in which stage of the rendering pipeline:
- https://www.ntu.edu.sg/home/ehchua/programming/opengl/CG_BasicsTheory.html
Found some more resources on PRB rendering
- https://3dcoat.com/pbr/
- http://artisaverb.info/PBT.html
- https://www.marmoset.co/posts/basic-theory-of-physically-based-rendering/
- https://www.marmoset.co/posts/physically-based-rendering-and-you-can-too/
2 downloadable PBR guides
- https://www.allegorithmic.com/system/files/software/download/build/PBR_Guide_Vol.1.pdf
- https://www.allegorithmic.com/system/files/software/download/build/PBR_volume_02_rev05.pdf
Edit:
Found a nice overview of the entire render pipeline over here:
- https://www.khanacademy.org/partner-content/pixar/rendering
Render on ;-)