I am relatively new to blender. I am using blender for precision modeling of products. As part of my learning process, I am currently trying to model and render the iPhone 7. I needed help in understanding how I can get the surface finish of the metal body to resemble the real one. I am attaching a few pics and links to help you guys understand exactly what I am looking for. I really hope someone can help me out!
Hey guys! So sorry for not replying sooner. Precision modelling took a lot of time. But I am done now! @rickyblender, I have done exactly that, used simple glossy and noise texture. But it still feels a little off. @kesonmis, I had not done much when I posted this.
The first image above has a noise texture attached to the displacement material input. The next two are simple glossy. Here is another render of the back side with some noise texture
The micro facets on the shell of the iPhone 7 are big enough to just about make them out with the naked eye.
An alternate approach, if I may? I would treat the surface less like small bumps, and more like small paint flakes. You can mix a voronoi cells texture with R-0.5 G-0.5 B-1.0 (tangent normal) to give the flakes of paint slightly varying facing directions. This will give you glints of sharp highlights without the surface looking bumpy.
Here’s an example. The cells are enlarged on the left to show you what it’s doing. Note that compressing the jpeg image softened the effect a bit.
Yes it is like the real thing. I have spent a lot of time over the years studying various material properties. It’s a minor obsession of mine.
Metal alloys are made up of tiny crystal plates called grains. Depending on the type and finish of the alloy, these grains can look a lot like voronoi cells.
Here is an example of an alloy under a microscope. Those grains are not perfectly planar so they will catch glints of light at different angles.
I am trying out the suggestions you guys gave me. For high-resolution closeup pics of the matte black iPhone, I browsed through Apple’s official site. I also found great pics in this disassembly article by ifixit-
I have a Matte Black iPhone with me. When you look at it with the naked eye, hardly any bumps are visible. It feels very smooth upon touch. The material that I am most reminded of when I look at it is graphite. The surface of the phone does have a texture similar to dark shading on paper using a graphite lead pencil.
As requested, I shall attach the blend file for the back casing. It is by no means perfect, but I hope it is good enough!
might need more then one black
top seems to be almost flat no noise or vey little
very matte so increase roughnes on diffuse and glossy to get matte mat
