Ceramic vase - with surface cracks

Support Materials and Textures
#1

Hello everyone,

I’m a Blender newbie and for the last couple of days I’ve been trying to render THIS vase with Cycles as an assignment for a Uni class. I’ve had no major issues with the modeling itself, while texturing is driving me mad. I can’t find a proper way to render the little random cracks appearing on the surface of the vase and I’ve tried a few different ways, but I’m not skilled enough. Some of these methods include using Cell Fracture (shards came out too big) and applying a Voronoi Texture node (this seems to be the easiest way, but I can’t outline the resulting coloured cells).

Can anybody describe me a correct node map or at least direct me in the right way?

#2

The principle of such a material is really simple: A coat of high gloss over a another shader with a bump map.

The little cracks would also be very simple if we had a Voronoi Crackle texture in Cycles. Alas, we don’t… So I cooked up an approximation for this quickie:

Forum China.png800×800 552 KB

The bump map I used:

snap82.png933×423 113 KB

There is still a lot of room for improvement so I give you my blend file as inspiration: Forum China.blend (144 KB)

Just don’t forget to come back and tell me my grade. :wink:

#3

nice vase

but he did ask to get some cracks on it too
depends on the size for the cracks ?
so can you show us some pic of what you had in mind !

there is a way to add a cracks brush texture then you can paint it anywhere you want

Capture.JPG529×564 28.7 KB

happy cycles

#4

Excellent, Kaluura, you came through once again! Very nice and lightweight crackle approximation.

#5

Thanks , Kaluura , excellent work

#6

As always, I’m turning my homework in late! OP probably can’t use it anymore but maybe Kaluura might want to grade me on it…

crackle.jpg800×800 134 KB

This is not ceramic at all, because the ceramic crackle that I know is not a bump but just a crackle color. This is more like stoneware I suppose.

#7

@DruBan: You get an F for not explaining! …And an A for the result. :smiley: Better Crackle than mine! Explain! Now! :wink:

#8

Well, here’s the nodetree for the crackle texture used for the pic above. It has a little quirkiness that I’m ironing out in a better version but this one is much lighter in the number of nodes…

The scale differential method here is just pure laziness but works for smallish objects. A much better method is to use a translation differential with a mapping node. In fact, with four of them. (Rather similar to the blur nodegroup from earlier.) That’s when the nodecount goes up!

Cracklenodes.png1200×600 66.2 KB

#9

Thanks druban for this idea for making some cracks