Depence is based on a PBR (Physical Based Rendering) Material concept. Instead of traditional rendering approaches, where artistic values and colors were taken to design a 3D scene, a PBR approach takes more physically correct parameters into account. Especially when it comes to lighting computation, several natural scientific mathematics and rules are used to simulate lighting and materials as realistically as possible.

One important aspect of a PBR pipeline is the definition of materials, which is now not only a color or texture, it is more a physical representation of a surface usually called "PBR Material" or "Substance".

For detailed information about PBR Rendering see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physically_based_rendering https://marmoset.co/posts/physically-based-rendering-and-you-can-too/

Create your own PBR Materials: https://www.substance3d.com/products/substance-designer

Source for ready-to-use high-quality PBR Materials: https://gametextures.com/

Change a Material Type

Once an 3D Model is selected, go to the Material Tab in the Settings window, click on Material button.

By default, each 3D Model has a bound PBR Material. This Material contains all settings and texture channels. To apply an existing library material to a 3D Model, simply drag & drop material from the library over the 3D model in the viewport.

When selecting your 3D-Model, you can find the Material settings in the Settings window:

Material Channels

The PBR material consists of 6 different channels: Albedo, Height, Normals, Metalness, Roughness, and Emissive. Most of these channels offer a texture channel along with an offset value.

Diffuse / Albedo (RGB)

This represents the base color of the material. This can be a solid color or a texture.

Metalness (Grayscale)

All differences in reflectance and absorption of natural surfaces can be split into two different types: Electric (Metals) and Dielectric (Plastics, Fabric, etc.). The Metalness value defines the transition between these types. 0=Dielectric 100%=Metallic

Roughness (Grayscale)

The Roughness channel describes how rough or smooth the surface is, which has a big influence on how it reflects the light and environment. 0%=smooth (like a mirror), 100% = full rough (like a paper)

Normals (RGB)

Normal Maps are used to add 3D details to the surface. These normal maps store a surface normal vector in tangent space. While Depence² uses a left-handed coordinate system it uses the following normal map orientation: Red=X+ Green=Y- Blue=Z+. Depence uses "DirectX-style" normal maps which are -Y:

Example of a normal map.

Height (Grayscale)

In addition to Normal Mapping the Heights are used to create the 3D illusion of bigger high detailed structures. Therefore a grayscale image is used where Black = lowest height and White = Max Height

UV Mapping

The UV-Mapping of a 3D Model defines how a texture will be applied on models polygons. These UV's are usually stored within the 3D-Model. In some cases, these won't be scaled correctly. Therefore each material has additional properties:

Transparency

This option allows to make an object transparent or masked out by an alpha mask.

Weathering

These properties create a procedural wetness effect on the surface.

The diffuse color of the PBR Material can be directly controlled by values (RGB) from the internal DMX Buffer. This makes it possible to quickly realize LED surfaces/objects.

You can patch the DMX Matrix fixture with the RGB profile to control the color material emission.

Please note that the Universe value is zero-based.

The DMX-Matrix feature creates a UV-mappable Matrix texture based on DMX values. This feature can be used to simulate thousands of LED fixtures without the performance overhead of individual fixtures because it directly reads DMX values from the internal buffer.

Material Settings

To add the DMX-Matrix feature on a model, access its Material settings, and click on the "..." button:

DMX Matrix Texture Properties

Close the window to validate your settings.

Emissive

The DMX-Matrix is material based. To make it emissive (visible in the dark), don't forget to raie the Emissive factor (maximum value is 500%):

DMX Matrix control

Now your material is ready to be used. You can patch the DMX Matrix fixture from the fixture library:

The DMX Matrix fixture has the same mode as the DMX Matrix Texture, select the one you have set.

You need to patch as many DMX Matrix fixtures as your DMX Matrix Texture has (Columns x Rows)

Note: - DMX Matrix fixture only controls 1 pixel at a time. - Their position in world space is not important, they are not represented in 3D.

Group DMX Matrix

To keep your project 3D Hierarchy as clean as possible, you can group all your DMX Matrix fixtures:

Examples

Depence primitives

Sweep Nurbs (with a spline)

Custom 3D model

Especially for virtual events we have added a proper chroma-key feature to mask out defined colors from the diffuse channel.

In the PBR Material Settings at the Transparency category, you can find all Chromakey settings.

Depence comes with several ready-to-use water materials, which can be found in the library at > Materials > Nature > Water.

As with all other materials use Drag & Drop to apply a water material on a 3D Model.

Water Material Settings

This material simulates LED video panels with different pixel pitch settings.

The pixels size and pitch can be adjusted to match your screen configuration from Pixels settings:

The screen intensity (unit is nits), can be adjusted from Light settings:

The AlphaMask option allows you to create transparent video wall: