Bevel shader to curvature map?

Support Materials and Textures
1

Is it possible to make typical curvature map with convex and concave edges by shader nodes?

2

There are 2 main ways to do it.

  • There is a shader trick with the bevel node, though that doesn’t differentiate between convex and concave and only works on sharp edges.

  • You can use the ambient occlusion node to get somthing close. It’s not exactly a curvature map, but can have a similar effect.

Here is a video that shows both methods.

1 Like
3

Thanks etn249
So am I right when think you need to sample the vector around to see if it’s convex or concave corner . Can position input be used to do it instead of pointless somehow ? I mean to see if very small extruded along normal position gets closer of further away in nearby surface points? Have no idea how to do it with nodes although.

4

Well, technically, that’s exactly what ambient occlusion does, so I guess the AO method is what you are looking for.

Or, you could combine the 2 methods. Use the bevel trick, but remove its visibility from concave corners by using an AO node as a mask.