(this same document is on the website, http://www.des-web.net/html/details.html, with pretty pictures)
Ok, here is the documentation- a brief explanation of each slider, checkbox, raido button and doo-hickey. I know the interfaces are complicated- sorry, a bit of the engineer peeking through. ;-)
You can only select one. Grayscale does a luma-preserving total de-saturation of the Input Shader (which can, of course, be more complex than the Texture map illustrated)
Desaturate activates the sliders in the box, allowing finer control over the color saturations.
Moves saturation of all colors simultaneously. Acts in tandem with the color Saturation Modifers. Positive numbers increase the saturation, negatives decrease it.
Moves the saturation of each color independently. Positive numbers increase the saturation, negatives decrease it. Acts in tandem with the Master slider.
A zero here indicates that the normal points right at the Vector. The unit is degrees- the range is 0 to 90. This is so you can set up any number of bands (up to 7) spaced however you want.
Smaller numbers are wider bands, larger numbers indicate faster falloff, narrower bands.
Color pickers to set the color for each band.
Hit this checkbox to make the falloff from the 1st box apply to all the others (saves having to copy the value when you want even bands, the most common case)
Anything that falls beyond 90 degrees picks up the last color.
Controls the way the bands interact. Smooth mix uses a simple sine curve to blend them. Shader mix uses values from the Edge Control shader to add some control to how they are blended. Turbulence and Noise type shaders are good for adding a little randomness.
Shader mix uses values from the Edge Control shader to add some control to how the bands are blended. Turbulence and Noise type shaders are good for adding a little randomness.
Instead of using any of the center, falloff, and color information. a grayscale value is returned. Inverting it allows you to have either black or white be the 0 vector (where the normal points right at the vector). Especially useful for CS3 with the new Gradient shader.
Light Vector means to point at the object referenced in the text box. Usually a light which would be pointed at the object with the iridescence shader, but it can be any object. Reference Vector lets you define a specific vector. Good for distant lights, just copy the yaw and pitch values in.
Angles for determining the reference vector. Degrees.
These sliders set the range of luma (returned from the Mix Shader) that map to the Shader picks below. For example, in the above image, if the Mix Shader returns black (zero luma), the Super Mixer will return the value from Shader 1 (red, in this case).
These are the sub-shaders mixed in by Super Mixer. They can have any structure.
Setting this checkbox will fill any values NOT covered by a range set with the Shader sliders with Shader 10.
Mixer mode uses the Mix shader and influences to determine the value returned. Add mode simply adds all the shaders together- useful for combining masks.
Smooth Mix uses a sine-type blending of overlapping shaders. Shader Mix uses input from the Blend shader to control the blending of overlapping shaders.
Allows the edges of the shaders to be feathered down.
Controls how quickly the edges feather down..
A little time saver. If you click Auto, the shader will find how many of the Shader channels are populated, and set up the influences such that they are evenly distributed. You can’t change them until you switch back to manual.
These sliders set how many times to tile the base weave pattern.
These set the spacing between the threads. Spacing and thread widths are RELATIVE not absolute.
These sliders set the widths of the threads. Thread width and spacing are RELATIVE not absolute. (Ie 10, 10, 20 is the same as 1,1,2)
These are the shaders for the threads. They can be simple or complex. You MUST fill from shader 1 to shader 5 without skipping any! Blank shader entries cause the plugin to think it has reached the end of the data. If you want stripes, just leave U1 or V1 blank while populating the other.
Values from this shader are used where there are no threads.
Shader compression allows you to sample a shader down such that it will fit within a thread. If you check Across, the shader will be sampled down across the thread. If you check Along, each segment of the thread, where it runs on top of the cross threads, will have the sampled down shader. If you check both, the entire sub-shader will be sampled down into each segment. Note that this shader is UV based- if you try to sample a shader that is not based on UV space, it will not sample down.
Basic Mode is a quick way to do a simple weave. It uses U1 and V1 only. None of the other shaders or widths are used. The On top checkbox matrix is also overridden. (If you haven’t figured it out yet, those are all of the controls below the line. ;-) Adanced mode enables all controls.
These checkboxes allow you to make any arbitrary pattern of crossovers.
Enable 3-D shading when used in Color channel. Enable bump when used in Bump channel.
Set how strong the across and along effects are. Smaller numbers are less intense.
These sliders control two distortion modes. Wiggle is a large scale distortion wapring. Edge distortion adds effects along the edges of the threads. The base values are taken from the Wiggle and Edge shader channels and then modified by these slider settings.
These shaders control two distortion modes. Wiggle is a large scale distortion wapring. Edge distortion adds effects along the edges of the threads. The base values are taken from these shader channels and then modified by the corresponding intensity slider settings.
These checkboxes allow easy mask generation, with all threads black and all spaces white, or vice-versa. It overrides any color choices made in the U, V, and Background shader channels. Very useful for the Transparency channel