90% of the time, lampshade is best simulated with a Vray2SidedMtl. The other 10% is when the shade is from a solid material and does not actually let through any light. In that case, just set up a regular, non-translucent material. The front side material should be set up as some sort of fabric, plastic, or paper. We are using…
The Diffuse for Rubber is dark gray, so you can use a simple color in this slot. The most important thing for the Rubber shader is the Reflection and Glossiness maps. They need to have a soft, patchy look, while not being completely blurred out. Here are the maps we will be using. Fresnel is on and set to ~2.0.…
Translucent Plastic can be a very difficult material to get right. Theoretically, it would be best achieved with a FastSSS2 material and Refractive scatter type... IF it had an option for Refraction Glossiness. However, since this feature has been 'in development' for a few years now, we have to use a different method. Use a VrayBlend with two layers to…
Cardboard is a pretty straight-forward material, with Diffuse, Reflection, and Bump maps. Keep the texture Blur values low, to avoid blurring the fine details. The only notable thing here is the hand painted Normal map that allows you to control the amount of corrugation. Turn the Normal strength to 0 for a flat surface, and bring it up to increase the…
Basic paper is a relatively simple material. The main thing is not to go too high on the Diffuse color brightness, which should be somewhere in 180~190 range. Make sure that your texture fits within this range. Paper also has some very blurry reflections, and since it's usually quite uniform, we don't really need dedicated Reflection/Glossiness maps. A Normal Bump…
The basic idea behind this material is very similar to the tree leaves, but there is no need for the Back material. Flower petals are usually pretty much the same from both sides. Here is the basic setup: the glossiness is a bit higher, while the reflections are a bit stronger than they would be for leaves. The translucency map…
The best way to create tree (or any other kinds of) leaves is with a Vray2SidedMtl. The reason is that leaves are very thin and let through a lot of light. This is especially visible when there is any sort of a back light. Basically, you'll need to set up two materials, front and back. The front is a strong,…
Let's take a slightly aged galvanized metal a step further and make an old, worn, slightly rusted version. The effect we are going for is caused by prolonged exposure to elements. Most likely, there would be some leaking rust from the top edge and some moisture coming up from the ground. Look at the reference photo to get the general…
Galvanized metal has a very specific look that can be a bit difficult to recreate in CG. The best way to describe it is that it looks as though the metal is covered with random flakes that reflect the light at different angles. This is caused by the zinc coating forming a crystallic structure on top of the base metal.…
Push a bit further and make a more worn version of your chrome, as in the reference photo: There are three more things to include in the shader: 1. Notice that there are some deeper scratches that also catch and reflect the light; a custom Bump map is necessary for that effect. 2. There are some darker and dirtier spots that…
