Iray - How To Make 'Used' Painted Metal Look Right?
Xenomorphine
Posts: 2,421
I've been trying to get a convincing level of reflectivity using various Iray shaders for military vehicles which were designed with 3Delight in mind, but can't quite get what I'm after... I seem to veer between flat, matte-like colours (which run the risk of making the vehicle look like it's made out of painted cardboard) or producing so much shine, that even if the textures are retained, they look so reflective that the thing feels like it's made out of chrome!
I'm trying to get this kind of look:
http://www.mardona.org/gallery/d/6494-2/vlcsnap-2012-02-12-13h09m44s144.png
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/c0/9e/8f/c09e8f8f8d50214b36ef3cd74fd4a5a0.jpg
I guess it's a case of the paint absorbing a certain degree of light, but bouncing the rest away. I'd like to be able to replicate that sort of feel, so that I can just apply the same settings to just about anything, from a plane to spaceship, which was made before Iray came into being. But how? Gah!
I've messed around with the Iray 'uber' shader (courtersy of Sickleyield's great Deviant Art tutorial of what each setting's meant to do), but can't quite achieve it. Was hoping Mec4D's brilliant PBS Shader set might do the trick, but... No such luck. I even tried experimenting with plastic looks, but they all look too 'new' and make a vehicle seem toy-like.
Anyone played around with pre-Iray era vehicle models and hit on the magical Iray formula, while retaining original textures?
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Comments
I thought military vehicles are painted with dull matte colors so you don't attract attention. I don't a "car paint" solution will give you a realistic result to what they really look like unless you need a stylized result.
Well, this is the thing, really. Look at the above examples and you see a convincing reflective sheen on the edges and some of the flat surfaces - it's slight, but there. That makes them look like real vehicles. Then render a vehicle in Iray without any reflectivity. It looks like cardboard. There's an uncanny valley effect and it ruins the illusion.
At a guess, I'd have low metallicity, possibly none. I'd probably go with roughness in the ~.6 range. Glossy weight around .5, maybe? And then put some sort of grunge/dirt tiling shader into glossy weight, to get that scuffed look (possibly ALSO into Roughness, to capture the slight variations between glossy and scuffed areas)
(I'll experiment when my current cat experiment is done. ;)
you are going to get the kind of reflections you want on a surface by using a top coat set to reflectivity mode. The higher the top coat roughness value, the less "shiny" and less reflective the surface will be. Also, the darker the top coat color, the less reflective it will be. So for an overall shine with reflections, but not too glossy, I would try a color value of gray 50% and a roughness of about 0.7 or 0.8, then lower the reflection setting to around 0.25 Maybe this will give a place to start, then adjust these settings as you see fit
Something like this is a great start: http://www.daz3d.com/mec4d-pbs-shaders-vol-1-for-iray
This is just a quick test with Pirhana.
Values:
Metallicity .8 (I found it looks better with it, which surprised me, but hey)
Base color = map + dark gray (value 128)
Glossy weight 1/pure white, glossy reflectivity 1, glossy roughness .5, glossy anisotropy .5, decent bump.
That, at least, seems to be in the right ballpark. Some good bump maps, normals, a glossy weight map, and a few other things might improve it more.
Useful suggestions!
Mec4D PBS shaders. https://www.daz3d.com/mec4d-pbs-shaders-vol-1-for-iray.
See the buggy in the attached.
Yeah, like I said in the initial post, I tried various shaders from that set, but none of them quite looked right when you do CTRL to retain existing model textures. Great for when you don't need to do that, however!
Sometimes the base model textures aren't good enough to hold up to detail.
Been getting some really good results from these uber base suggestions! Much more realistic than before. :)