Best way to apply spec/gloss materials? (eg Arroway)

[JGallagher]

Hey everyone, I was curious to what would be the recommended method for applying textures like Arroway in Corona, with a diffuse, spec, glossiness, and bump? I'm trying to get a better understanding of materials because it's easily my weakest area of rendering. I know there isn't one magical solution but I'm hoping you guys will have some good advice.

Obviously the diffuse and bump aren't a problem but I'm a bit lost on what to do with the spec, gloss, etc. Would it be wise to make standard materials then using the material converter? Or is there a better method?

Thanks for the help.

[maru]

I am not sure what the problem is as I am not familiar with Arroway textures. Are you having problems with loading right bitmaps into right material slots, or is it something different? Are these PBR materials? Maybe this will help? http://www.marmoset.co/toolbag/learn/pbr-conversion

[Nejc Kilar]

If I'd want to keep it short then I'd say you can experiment with those textures in order to obtain vastly different results.

For wood, for example, if you plunge a B/W texture right into the reflection channel then you are going to affect it way differently than plugging that same map in the reflection glossiness.

I mean for me it is all highly experimental. You can create cool looking modern wood without a reflection texture (just the glossiness) and stuff like that but to me it always comes down to playing with the values. Sometimes the clients want these super polished looks and in that case you will probably make the textures a lot less noisy (i.e whiter with less contrast) so that the shine really shows. If you want to go the other way in terms of styling it, making it look older and more worn out, then you'd probably want to use more contrast in those textures and apply some additional dirt ones...

Hope it helps :)

[JGallagher]

I must be over complicating it in my head Maru, I seem to be good at doing that. They're not PBR though. Say I have a diffuse map, bump map, then a third grayscale map that is meant to go into specularity, glossiness, and reflection. Would I put that third map into Corona's reflection gloss (and turn up the gloss value?), and reflection colour? I guess not having all the inputs named the same is confusing me.

Nkilar, that does help. I was experimenting for the last couple nights and got decent results but I started to doubt myself, and thought I should ask the experts. I don't have the self-confidence to work with Corona yet haha.

[Juraj]

1) In ideal world, with correct material behavior (like in Vray, Maxwell, Unreal4, Marmoset viewer,etc..):

- Keep default reflection 1.0 and IOR 1.52 for almost every material in world, that is not metallic.
-place texture into glossiness slot. Adjust output on this texture to make glossy or rough material.

2) In Corona, this doesn't apply currently. Read Dubcat's threads on this forum on why.

-place texture into glossiness slot. Adjust output on this texture to make glossy or rough material.
-if you created material with low glossiness (rough look), clamp your reflection accordingly (from 1.0 ---> to 0.5 for example), and also your IOR 1.52 to something lower (like 1.3 ).
-adjust until it looks good to your eye.

Only pure glossy material looks correct in Corona by default (1.0 glossy) without clamping reflection and IOR.


Placing the same texture into both reflection and glossiness slot is not physically correct, but can you give you stronger creative input. You basically multiply the effect.

[JGallagher]

Thanks Juraj, I will try these tips out this evening. Do you guys use special maps for the Corona tutorials (layered material), those materials look so good with just a few simple maps. It's really impressive, that's what made me look at Arroway textures.