Creating metal in a shader

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#1

Just for the fun of it … I could probably go all out and do some crazy stuff, but just in case people would use this as a starter for something!

afbeelding
afbeelding2037×1253 267 KB

  • The selected nodes (orange) show what I’ve added in addition to the lecture
  • Here’s my train of thought, more or less
    • Mix node (bottom) → I wanted to pick a color “based on something” to basically show the wooden texture in some areas, but then have some metal in other places
    • Separate XYZ and Color Ramp → to determine this “something”: the separate allows me to only pick the X-component from my UVs (because, in my UV-unwrap, the “up-and-down” parts of my barrel run from left to right) … The color ramp then translates this: everything below 0.1 or above 0.9 gets alpha 0, everything else gets alpha 1
      • so now that mix node will pick my texture from 10% up to 90% up the barrel
    • Multiply Add → step 2, I want to use 0 and 1 to set “metallic”, but the values had to be turned around so I multiply all by “-1” (so I get 0 and -1) and I add “1” (so I get 1 and 0) … Now my metal bands are metallic
    • Float Curve → step 2, I want to set the roughness; I could just plug in that alpha value but then my metal is fully smooth and my wood is fully rough; with my float curve I basically set the metal roughness at the left side, and the wood roughness at the right side (the rest of the curve actually doesn’t matter)

afbeelding
afbeelding459×510 41.3 KB

I’m pretty sure there are better nodes for doing the things I’m trying to do (or even use different approaches to achieve the same) … Of course I could also just add a 2nd material (which is probably the “logical” solution here, I just wanted to play around to see if it’s at all possible); obviously here I have the freedom of playing with values somehow (maybe the line between metal and wood should be more wavy and irregular? Could be harder to do with just adding a material).

I could also plug in an actual metal texture instead of providing that dark grey color … There may even be a smart math method to get a metal border in the top and bottom parts. The possibilities are endless :smiley:

1 Like
#2

Nice solution.

You could also do:

  • Add multiple materials to the object and assign them to specific faces
  • Create besides a diffuse map (colors) a roughness map

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