First go at something realistic

So, I’ve recently started blender and wanted to get photo-realism down as soon as possible. I’ve been doing a couple of small projects; rooms, items from around my house etc, and this is the first I’ve got close to a point of completion. I have a few thoughts as to where I’ve gone wrong, and would be interested to see what others have to say, and think about where I may take it/how I can improve on it.


Bonus points if you know which headphones it’s based on :wink:

  1. I think there aren’t enough shadow/reflection to perceive depth. Interesting video: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=5fgOK0odA1o
  2. The steel/chrome part of the band is too smooth/reflective/flawless, it seems too similar to the background. (Maybe you should put some objects/things in the scene whitch can be reflected by the chrome band.)
  3. I don’t understand the material of the brown part of the cylinder. If it is wood the texture (bump map?) (is it a noise texture?) don’t seems realistic. (BlenderGuru did make a few tutorials about realistic texturing, and there are a few free textures at his webshop (poliigon)).
  4. There isn’t any cable or (jack) connector on the headphone…
    I’m a beginner, so maybe I’m wrong.

I agree with what that artist said ,
add reflections and reflective , and fix the material.
Overall , the model is really well done !
The materials , textures , and surroundings simply need adjusting.

These are very similar to my Sennheiser Momentums… mine are on-ear (and blue), not very comfortable with glasses :expressionless: Those seem to be the over-ear model.

The model is very well done.

I would add mode anisotropy to the round metal part, or remove it completely and add very small concentric circular grooves.

The brown plastic also lacks a lot of glossiness, it feels way too rough.

Thanks for the replies everyone.

Just to address a few things:
Yes, they are based on my Momentums.
A cable hasn’t been added yet because it’s all still one side mirrored, and I wanted to make sure the model was right before I apply the modifier so I can change just the one side.
The ear cups are an odd speckled brown plastic. I agree there’s something not right about them and they’re my main point of displeasure.
The metal bands have a brushed texture on them, just there’s nothing to show it (marginally more noticeable on the far side). I’ll do a render on a wooden surface so maybe it will show more. I think the texture itself is fine though.
The round metal part has lots of concentric circular groves modelled (even counted to get the right number), the render is just too low res to show them.

I’ll try and get a higher res render of the model as it is now so it can be seen better.

As I say, the plastic ear-cups are what is providing me the most trouble. At a distance they’re a fairly homogenous plastic, but up close they’re actually an odd speckled material, possibly with little flecks of metallic material in there. I tried doing it by masking colours with noise textures, but it obviously hasn’t worked too well. My first thought is to tone down the colour differences, reduce the size of the texture and add maybe a little sheen? Simply making them glossier results in reflections that just don’t look right for the material. Here’s the best closeup I can find of them.

The other bit I’m wondering about is the leather ear-cups. I did a bit of sculpting to try and get the creases and so on, but wondering if anyone thinks it would benefit from more, finer cracked up detail, or if that would just be overdoing it.

Many thanks

Here’s an updated render. No changes to the model itself, just a different surface for it to sit on and different HDRi used. I kept it fairly plain to start with to not detract from the model itself, but this definitely shows it off a bit better. Also shows quite how terrible the plastic is :spin: I knew it was something that really wasn’t right, but as I say, this is pretty much my first proper model so I don’t know how to make it right. Any suggestions are welcome.


I had a bit of a play with materials and this is the closest I can seem to get. It’s a metallic principled BDSF with a fairly matte clear coat over it. Seems to be the most realistic representation of the highlights I can get.

It then has a noise texture filtered through RGB curves to make it more contrasty, fed into the main roughness node of the shader to try and simulate the speckles on the material. It still seems wrong though, and just seems to stick out in comparison to the rest of the model. I’m not sure if I need a really fine grain like bump map on it, just go give a small bit of extra roughness.

Anyway, here it is, let me know what your thoughts are.

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