Cycles + Grasshopper | recreating a plastic shader

To be able to create Cycles materials for Raytraced using Grasshopper you first create a Cycles XML material in Rhino Material Editor. If you don’t see the material you’ll have to enable showing of private content, as the material isn’t publicly supported. Use _TestShowPrivateContent.

Assign the newly created XML material to an object of your chosing.

Now you can create a shader in Grasshopper. In the very least you should add an Output node, and probably a good idea to attach a Diffuse BSDF to the Surface input of the Output node. Now right-click on the Output node and select the Cycles XML material - if you have named the material in Rhino you’ll see its name in the context menu.

When you have a viewport in Raytraced you’ll see that it automatically updates when you make changes to your shader graph.

In the conversion GH file you’ll have to use the Output node in the debugger group, if you set a material to the other you’ll cause a crash. That is because this file is used to automatically create code as well - a very useful tool for me.

Does this help?

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passed the _TestShowPrivateContent > now i can link material

however, looking into the file, i must say its not very easy to understand . would love to see it more simple.

Probably easiest if you start a new graph and gradually go through all the BSDF nodes. You can even check many Blender Cycles tutorials - UI will look different, but many parts should be clear how to make with GH. Only thing to keep in mind is that not all nodes have been wrapped yet…

Hi @nathanletwory, I am trying to add GHshadernodes to my GH, but Error messages always show up when loading GH (see picture below). I have tried with all of the versions on this link but none of them is workin… I’m working on the latest Rhino6 version (6.1.18037.13441), does it have something to do?

I use myself v0.1.0, which is the current release . You should delete all other versions.

I was thinking about micro & macro texture variations with Rhino and Cycles. With vray it was achievable but not very pleasant. I saw that there is Blend texture option in Rhino but it doesn’t seem very pleasant thing to set either. Based on my expierience with UE4 I think node based approach is a way to go in that case.
This brings me here…

Do you have any time for developing this part of Cycles in Rhino/GH or you are focused on other things?

After I watched your YT videos carefully it seems to me that many things are possible right now. However, couldn’t reproduce noise-based blend.