Shading

These function the same as the settings described for the Shading Effector’s Shading tab. So don’t be surprised if you see Cloners and Effectors mentioned in the following!

The exception: A Material tag assigned to the object to be deformed (or the Displace Deformer itself) can be used to affect the object, as long as Channel is not set to Custom Shader.

Channel

There are basically two methods of projecting a texture onto a clone group (using the Shader Effector) or object points (using the Displace Object to move the object points):

• With the help of an additional Material tag
• Using a custom shader without a Material tag (UVW mapping)

Select a material channel. An additional Material tag field will be displayed. Drag any texture into this field from the Object Manager. The texture will now be applied by the corresponding material’s selected Material Channel.

Edit

Clicking on this button will make the settings of the corresponding shader available in the Attributes Manager.

Material Tag
Shader

If a material channel is selected, this field will be made available, into which you can place a Material tag.

If you select Custom as your shader mode a texture selection menu will be made available.

Select a bitmap or Shader for the Effector to use. Using the Material tag method is recommended because it offers better results and can be used in conjunction with the texture tools (see also Texture) to adjust the texture coordinates interactively.

 Mapping

OffsetU [-∞..+∞]

If Custom is selected as the shader type, several parameters will be made available that can be used to move (Offset) or scale (Length) the texture within the UV coordinates. For Noise Shaders UV (2D) should be selected in the Space setting.

OffsetV [-∞..+∞]

LengthU [-∞..+∞%]

LengthV [-∞..+∞%]

Tile

Use this setting to define whether or not the texture should be tiled.

 Strength

Use

Use this setting to define how the Shader Effector will interpret colors that have been extracted for a Cloner Object.

• Alpha: If a Shader or Texture (e.g., a video) has an alpha channel this option will analyze it. If no alpha channel is present the Texture’s grayscale will be extracted.
• Gray: The grayscale value will be used.
• Red, Green, Blue: Only the respective color will be utilized.

Invert

Use this setting to invert the alpha channel and its effect.