Author Topic: Anyone ever made a good mother of pearl material?  (Read 2875 times)

2020-10-18, 14:50:24

Jpjapers

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Im just curious if anyones ever made something similar to a mother of pearl or 'nacre' material.
Im  thinking some combination of Siger Thinfilm and a custom IOR map but the way it glistens in non-uniform directions is something ive not seen recreated before.

« Last Edit: 2020-10-18, 22:54:18 by Jpjapers »

2020-10-18, 19:30:23
Reply #1

pokoy

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I made a wood setup with a similar angle-dependent where I've used different layers with different bump maps, each of these materials would have no diffuse, only reflection set to 999, the layer then masked with either a fresnel map or just mixed in with small numbers. That way you can set up different reflection behaviors that would react to viewing angle differently based on the bump map. Stronger bump map values might be needed to get more extreme results.
The base layer would the translucent/refractive, then the bump reflection layer(s), then a final coat reflection... of course it's a fake but I don't see any other way to get that.

2020-10-18, 20:59:32
Reply #2

pokoy

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I have set up a simple example - it uses Siger ThinFilm so you need to have it installed.
Also, only built in noise maps, you might get better results with some 3rd party Voronoi maps.

Open the scene, render Perspective view in IR, and orbit around the cylinder, you'll see how reflection of each layer moves in different directions.

It's a layered material, and all reflective materials have a different (bigger scale) noise map to produce different viewing angle behavior BUT the all share the same (small scale) cellular map to give all layers a similar structure, bump for these materials is setup with a composite map:
- base -> grey/white with some SSS (though not visible here at all) and a bit of rough reflection, some noise used for bump to perturb the reflection (I think it's instanced from another map but you can use anything else here)
- ref 1 -> no diffuse, white reflection, the main reflection layer with 2 bump maps in composite map to mimic your example
- ref 2 -> no diffuse, colored reflection, 2 bump maps in a composite map with the cellular map instanced from ref 1, bottom bump map has different scale/rotation. ThinFilm in reflection slot to get colored reflections
- ref 3 -> same as ref 2, different thin film settings, and again, bottom bump map has different scale/rotation
- ref clear coat -> simple clear coat layer

It's quite a challenge to get the thin film reflection color right, not sure I got them right here.
Reflection is *very* sensitive to tone mapping, it can quickly lose or gain the nice silky look depending on glossiness and highlight clamping...

It's only a 10 minutes example, but maybe it'll help you getting a good result. Have fun tweaking!

2023-11-03, 10:59:21
Reply #3

Ekladiuos

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