Tried to replicate a salt lamp sitting on my table, but only with a limited success, despite the complexity of the material. The actual lamp has some visible (and totally amazing) structural irregularities - cracks, colour variations, etc. If it is possible to do with surface (and/or volume) materials alone, without affecting actual geometry, I wasn’t successful at figuring out, how.
2 Likes
Hi decembered,
It’s a valiant effort. I have one of these lamps and yes it would be tough one to replicate. Are you keeping at it? If so here’s some helpful hints over at StackExchange that may do the trick: https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/95399/how-to-make-himalayan-rock-salt-chunks-in-blender
Cheers and stay safe!
1 Like
Thank you, Paul, in fact I have seen (and scrutinized) that very post during my experiments. Materials there are good but still have a few of problems, besides they rely on external sources of light heavily. I wanted to come as close to an actual lamp as possible, and make it the primary source of light in the night scene, although ended up with using HDRI and an added candle for the composition’s sake.
And the key problem - how to simulate internal structural irregularities of a very, very schistous crystal by materials alone - is still unsolved. The actual crystal has got lots of internal facets partially reflecting, partially refracting, partially absorbing light passing through them. I’m less and less sure anything similar it can be achieved by materials alone, without actually fracturing geometry.
Besides I ran into limitation of my laptop and/or Blender. This is how my salt crystal mat looks like now:
And there is some extra noodle grouped for recycling:
Blender crashes everytime I try to switch to Material Preview mode.
This isn’t exactly helpful with fine-tuning the material.
Hi decembered,
Have you tried your node setup on a different machine or Blender versions? I can’t make out your nodes exactly so can’t replicate and test on my end. I have 2.83 and would be glad to test your node setup. Although, I’m no expert so can’t promise that I can fix it. Doing it 100% procedural is very tricky.
Have you looked at Mark Miso’s crystal shader on Blend Swap? https://www.blendswap.com/blend/24810. It doesn’t have all the features you want but it looks nice and may contain some useful techniques. I’ve just started to play with his node setup myself.
Cheers,
Paul
1 Like
Paul,
I’ve even did a similar thing once to that of Mark Miso’s - https://www.blendernation.com/2019/07/05/behind-the-scenes-lotsa-crystals/
I’m sharing the material for the Salt Lamp. Be advised, it’s 2.91 Cycles, and I have a volumetric emission object inside the crystal in the scene. Here is just one ball with procedural material applied.
Eevee preview crashes once you try to bring the view closer to the object. May be it can be optimized somehow, I just have very little idea how.
Sorry for the mess in the noodlework.
salt_lamp_material_only.blend (1.5 MB)
1 Like
Hi decembered,
I’m still on 2.83.5 so it might be tricky but will take a look. Thanks for the file. I have seen your excellent Blender Nation post. Very well done. Perhaps this will lead to another one which I’m sure will help allot of others also.
Cheers,
Paul
1 Like
Hi decembered,
Tried on 2.83 and the shader is quite slow. Sorry, I’m unable to isolate the issue but will keep at it.
Cheers,
Paul
1 Like
the issue is, most likely, due to the number of procedural textures involved. Some day I think I’ll try to bake their sets into tga images to see if this helps.