This page provides information about the V-Ray Curvature shader in Cinema 4D.
Overview
VRayCurvature is a texture that effectively samples the underlying mesh for curves. A region around each shaded point gets sampled with additional rays (similar to VRayDirt) and all additional normals are averaged to get a smooth normal at the original point. This normal is used to compute the color. The color at each shaded point is a greyscale value: darker values are dents (or holes), lighter values are peaks. The parameters should be adjusted by trial and error since they generally depend on the scale used, hence the defaults might not be appropriate in some cases.
UI Path: Texture > V-Ray > VRayCurvature
Parameters
Mode – Switch between respective modes.
Legacy – Does not distinguish if the mesh is curving outward (convex) or inward (concave) but instead takes into account only the amount of overall curvature
Convex – Generates a grayscale, based on the mesh's outward curve.
Concave – Generates a grayscale, based on the mesh's inward curve.
Both – Generates a red-green gradient, based on both the mesh's convex and concave. Red corresponds to the mesh's convex and green corresponds to the mesh's concave.
Scale – Adjusts the scale, relative to which the curvature is measured.
Threshold – Curvature values below this threshold are ignored and are shown as pure black. This focuses the curvature effect only around the most curved areas of the mesh.
Subdivs – Controls the number of samples around each shaded point.
Sample Spread – Controls the radius of the sampled region.
Ignore Bump – When enabled, excludes Bump maps from the VRayCurvature computations.
Min Output Color – Specifies the minimum output color value for the most concave area (the dents in the mesh). Default value is 0 - black.
Max Output Color – Specifies the maximum output color value for the most convex area (the peaks in the mesh). Default value is 1 - white.
Output Color Gain – Multiplies the output values.
Output Color Lift – Uniformly lightens the output values.
Output Color Gamma – Applies gamma correction to the output values.
Output Color Pivot – Pivots the value to the gamma correction (output values equal to the pivot value are left unchanged).
Output Color Clamp – When enabled, clamps the Min Output Color and Max Output Color values in [0,1] range (negative values are output as 0 and values above 1 are being output as 1)
