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How to connect material channels like in Maya
Hello,
As a long-time Maya user, I would often set up a texture map (procedural or an image) and connect it to both the color channel and the bump channel, occasionally with a mathematical operator inbetween. I’m trying to achieve the same thing in C4D, but can’t find an obvious way to do it. The existence of the “Reference Shader” plugin (https://www.blackstar-solutions.de/index.php?id=4) suggests to me that it’s not possible (without the plugin). Is this just a limitation of C4D? Or is there something I’m missing?
Thanks,
Paul
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3 Replies
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it is possible to directly link one channel to another with XPressions/Set Driver/Set Driven (right-click on pretty much anything in the Attribute Manager). So the texture (or value) from one channel can be directly linked to another channel. If a Driver has been set you can also Create Script which might be what you need for manipulation in-between but I don’t know that for sure as it is not something I have used. There is another 3rd party plugin for this as well you might want to look at Smart Shaders at https://cinemaplugins.com
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Thank you for the advice! Sounds like quite a hassle – I think I’ll just do it manually for now – I only have a couple of textures to tweak.
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You can do this in the Material editor by clicking and dragging. In the color channel put in your image or procedural texture.Go to the Basic tab and activate Bump. Then with both the Color and Bump channels selected you’ll see both tab contents in the editor. Drag the little preview of the Color texture onto the texture bar in the Bump channel and it will copy to that channel.
Jack
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