Oil is popular choice for finishing wood. The result has strong colors, soft reflections, and still shows the texture of the wood very well. This is an example of an oiled piece of furniture. Note: things are a lot easier if you have arranged your UVs so that the wood grain goes in the right direction on all parts of your…
If we want to make chrome look slightly used, we need to add on a few more things. Metals often have a subtle glow in their reflections, For example, take a look at the reference photo below. It looks like the light is bleeding a little bit around the edges of the highlights. This effect is caused by micro-scratches and…
A simple car paint material is easy to set up. V-ray comes with a fairly good material that is specifically designed for automotive paints. The shader is called VrayCarPaintMtl. It consists of 3 layers: base paint, metallic flakes, and clear coat. Basic paint is pretty diffuse and the main color is defined by the Base Color Diffuse component. So, the…
Even though concrete is a 'rough' material, it quite often has some strong, slightly glossy reflections in places that are smooth, especially if smooth plywood is used as the form for pouring it. It is never completely smooth and shiny (unless polished), so it has this patchy look most of the time: The Diffuse is a basic photo sourced texture.…
This material tutorial will cover 'regular' fabrics like cotton, wool, linen, basic polyester, etc. These are fabrics that look a bit soft but are not shiny or velvety. Most fabrics fall into this category. Diffuse and Softness The best way to start creating a fabric shader is by using a good photo. The pictured fabric must be flat, and it should be…
Distressed wood can have many different looks. There are countless variables at play here: the original finish of wood; age; impact from the environment; mechanical damage; dirt and grime; etc.. As you can see, it would be impossible to cover all possible scenarios, so I here are some general guidelines. It's good to start with the diffuse texture. From that,…
We are going to create a rich, brown, oiled leather material. This kind of leather is mostly used on high-end furniture. First step: make the Diffuse map. At this point, you have to decide whether the material going to be re-usable on different objects, or if it will be tailored for a specific object. In this example, we will be…
Human skin is a tricky subject that needs a SSS shader to achieve good looking results. We will use VrayFastSSS2 material for this purpose. First of all, the skin is composed from multiple layers. The outer layer is very thin and light, while the inner layer is quite red or pink in color. Together, they create the characteristic color we…
Carpet is similar to natural fiber materials, but there are a few key differences. Artificial fibers have a Diffuse color that is different than Black. Use a Falloff map to create an illusion of slightly fuzzy edges. A very common effect is that the ends of the fibers are soft and fuzzy. A similar look can be faked by using…
In this tutorial, we will start with a basic, polished Granite. Here is our Diffuse map: The idea is to make the surface almost perfectly smooth, with just a few rough spots or indents that would appear on a natural stone. So, we need to make a Bump map first. Something like this will work: To make the Bump a…
