Blender shaders and materials

[ryzenmaster75]

Hello

can you make recomendation about the best shader that looks like metal / steel objects in blender?

Thanks.

[Smarty]

You'll want some flavour of dif.spec.weight.add.env. The specular lighting and environmental reflection ends up being multiplied by the diffuse colour (material colour * base texture rgb * vertex colour rgb) in addition to the usual factors, which parallels how metallic surfaces behave and gives you a lot of control over the appearance.

If you want very reflective, mirror-like metal, use vehicle_reflection, overdrive the env_factor (> 1.0), use a negative add_ambient (~-0.25) to prevent it from blowing out, and set the fresnel to 1.0, 1.0. The optimal settings will also depend heavily on the range of specularity you need to represent; The higher you push the env_factor and the fresnel, the harder it is to get anything to look non-reflective without having to make some part of the lighting equation very dark.

If you want a more satin look, use fuzzy_reflection, with a lower env_factor and set the fresnel around 0.2, 0.9. Just be vigilant about checking the night-time appearance because the fuzzy_reflection cubemap is static and doesn't dim at night the way vehicle_reflection does.

You'll definitely want to study the Lonestar and the Anthem to see how SCS' artists have used these techniques to great effect. You may also want to study the aluminum materials on my Peerless or Alutrec trailers, as I think they are also good examples.

[ryzenmaster75]

That's a lot of explaining Smarty's :d, i need time to understand that as i don't have much knowledge in these matter hahaha

But thanks for providing the answer, i will definitely look up at the mod you've said .

Cheers!

[50keda]

Just as a reminder. Do not add_ambient values smaller than 0 and do not use values bigger than 1 for diffuse, specular nor env_factor. Addditionally fresnel values should be in range <0, 1>.

[Smarty]

Haha, yes, these hacks are unnecessary with 1.40+. Prior to that, all those 'forbidden' values were from SCS assets.