Hello, everyone!
I’m trying to make a fairly realistic sport shoe for my personal project. It will be in the background, so it doesn’t have to be 100-% physically accurate.
I have modelled it, uv-unwrapped, baked and painted all necessary textures, but I can’t get good-looking materials. Especially the main one - chamois leather (suede, chammy, shammy, I’m not sure which word I should use). Here are reference images illustrating the material I want to simulate.
P.S. I’m not very good at English (at least, not yet), so sorry for my numerous and quite possible mistakes.
Timo
Dirt can be made in say Gimp or Photoshop. It can be a UV layer added with a blend and adjusting with the FAC. So if you have a diffuse color making that color and want to add a bit of grunge to it. Send that diffused baked layer over to P.S or Gimp create a new layer on top and add to taste. Then assign it as the color or material. So you could make a square of the color desired, send it over to PS or Gimp, lay a grunge layer over the top. Make half of the layer grungier with (variety) so when UV unwrap and assign you can move it around your layer to select what part is dirtier then another. Think Gradient.
Or you could make a layer by itself with alpha PNG export and mix blend on top of what you already have.
You will not have bump map for it doing it that way… However, if you made separate layers as mentioned in PS or Gimp and then assigned it to a puckered or lifted geometry face. You would get dirt, 3d too. Or make a bump map, spec map and color map.
I am new to Blender and learning myself, however this is something I am dealing with right now. There are many ways to do Art in Blender, I am sure someone may have another way to proceed.
Netcommercial
I’ve done it exactly so, if I understood you correct. I made an alpha mask for splatters, and used it as a Mix factor for a very basic Diffuse Shader with Noise texture for bump and colour variation.
Actually, the dirt is the only material I like in my image. And while I’m writing this post (and I’m doing it very slow:yes:), a couple of ideas came up to my head how to improve the dirt layer.
Timo,
Right, that is what I was thinking about. For your Suede or "nu buck’ texture…If this is going to be motion and you want the texture to react to the changing light and fresnal camera affect. You may need to create a bump map for your suede rough leather… If not motion and only a still you could use a nice png of a piece of suede or nu buck leather… Like the weave of a seatbelt fabric. Most use a png to apply to it and not make the weave of the seatbelt material. One of my questions from an earlier post where Eppo ( another great artist here) shared that with me. Got 14mp camera?
I have seen razor stubble done on some models, I guess if it were thick enough it could look like suede with some manipulation but will be very labor intensive on your render out, especially if it is a motion shot.
Maybe one of the more experienced artists will chime in, as mentioned I am new to Blender and by far, am not using all the tools in the box.
I gotta state though, I like the first shoe…I’d wear it. Maybe switch out the laces…
A little update.
I have improved the dirt material. I added another layer of dirt, thinner and kind of semi-transparent, like splatters, dried long ago. And I added a couple of textures: for the inner part of the shoe (fabric), and for the suede material. But I’m still not satisfied and looking for a solution.
Mix in a velvet shader node with the diffuse in your setup. It was made for materials like this. Might want to use layer weight facing to control velvet/diffuse mixing and shift the color a little bit in the velvet vs. the color in diffuse. For a brushed leather, the “velvetiness” is going to be subtle, so experiment to suit taste. Otherwise I’d say you’re pretty close.
What Paul stated… then mess with lighting and DOF, maybe even a slight gaussian blur in composite mode for realism. I see you have a red emitter from the bottom of the shoe. Shouldn’t that get darker the closer to touching the floor it gets? Like a drop shadow would give in composite mode node…
It is not an emitter actually. I belive it is called a colour bleeding. Thanks for pointing, I’ve lost freshness of my vision, but now I see the sole’s colour might be too bright.
Yeah, you’re right. And you are not the first, who pointed out this. Now I’m considering remaking all the textures from scratch, just for the sake of practising.
Let’s say, my workflow is combined. Some of the textures I baked (AO, lace pattern normal map), some I made in Inkscape (sole’s colour), some I made in Gimp (from images), some I painted in Blender (dirt splatters).
