FStormMixMat and FStormMix

[Frudel]

Hi,

I'm a long term V-Ray user and in my first month of FStorm testing.
Loving it so far!

BUT one thing drives me nuts:
- Why does the MixMat just allow 2 shaders? It's super complicated to always pipe MixMat after MixMat after MixMat. Couldn't it be done the same way as in V-Ray where there is one BlendMtl and several Layers of Shaders can be added?
- Same for the MixTexture. Why not build something same like the standard 3ds Max Composite texture where you can layer multiple textures on top of each other with their own blending mode. Now i always have to daisy-chain several MixTexttures together and it makes everything extremely complicated and not intuitive.

In the end mainly because of these 2 things the FStorm shaders always end up in endless node-chains where as the same shader in V-Ray is super simple and compact.

Apart from that it is an awesome renderer!!!

[Karba]

Hi

Mixing 10 materials / textures is not a good idea in general. It may slow down rendering a lot.

[Frudel]

So that means you don't plan any changes in regards to that workflow?
There are counless situations where mixing materials / textures is essential, especially when trying to build more procedural textures (which plays in favor of GPU renderers memory limitations)
For example you want to create a nice looking concrete textures:

- Layer 1: Concrete Base Texture,
- Layer 2: Overall dirt for large scale variations
- Layer 3: Overall dirt for small scale variations
- Layer 4: Procedural Dirt Effects using AO
- Layer 5: Procedural Edge Brightening Effects using AO inverted
- ...

Pretty standard situation. In V-Ray that's a piece of cake (as shown here for example: https://youtu.be/38-TGp5QCMY?si=SCVqfUhxo4Mql4p2) while in FStorm that ends up like an endless chain of nodes where you would lose overview very fast.
Really hoping that this can be improved.