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Gather Node Part One |
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THE GATHER NODEThe Gather node is one of the new raytracing nodes provided with Poser 6.What does it do?The gather nodes collections colours from surrounding objects and adds them to the object it is plugged into. Any source of colour within range will be used to produce the final colour, although ambient colours produce the strongest effects (and will be used in the examples that follow). Think of the gather node as lighting that works backwards - instead of setting your light source to emit light, you can set the nearby objects to look for it. It can be used to produce a wide range of interesting effects, from torch light to a different type of shadow catcher, or the glow of a light sabre or camp fire.Where to plug it?The gather node can be plugged into quite a few nodes. For these examples, I have created a simple sample scene containing one sphere, with the ambient colour set to red, and the ambient value set to one, resting on a cube, which will contain the gather node. All other lights are turned off, so all of the illumination will come from the gather node. The render settings are moderate quality, with raytracing turned on.The first surprise with the gather node is that it seems to make very little difference which node it is plugged into. The main exception to this is the normal diffuse node, which ignores any gather node plugged into it. Fig. 1: Standard Gather node plugged into Alt_Diffuse Fig. 2: Standard Gather node plugged into Alt_Specular Fig. 3: Standard Gather node plugged Ambient Node, colour white, value 1 Fig. 4: Standard Gather node plugged Translucent Node, colour white, value 1 As you can see, all four images are close to identical. This is very useful. Very few materials use all four of these nodes, allowing you to add a gather node to just about any existing material. The gather node can also be plugged into some unexpected places. The next image shows a gather node plugged into the transparency node, with transparency and transparency edge both set to one. The material becomes invisable, apart from those areas that the gather node would otherwise have picked up. Gather node shadow catcher anyone? Fig. 5: Standard Gather node plugged in transparency Next, we have the bump map. This time we get a nice pitted effect, with more impact near the object. Perhaps a meteorite strike, with impact damage scattered around the glowing remains? Fig. 6: Standard Gather node plugged in bump Finally, the displacement node. The image on the left uses the standard gather node, while the one on the right has the samples increased to 50. This could be used to produce the effect of long grass, or perhaps flames. Fig. 7: Standard Gather node plugged in displacement node |
