Hiya! I’m trying to create a node setup for some Iron Man suits, and want them to resemble the look of the suits in the films. I’ve started with the Hulkbuster suit, and have combined an anisotropic shader with some diffuse and glossy shaders. Does this seem accurate, or is it not quite right?
It looks great!! The yellow part could maybe be a brighter yellow, and the red should probably be a bit darker and much less shiny, maybe you should put in more diffuse and make it more rough. The suit itself should have some sort of texture, maybe some scratches, and some dirt as well. You should also add the blue light in the chest, knees and eye. With this lighting is a bit harder to see if it’s right because the lighting in the movie is very extreme, so maybe try looking for a more yellowish or orange HDRI or background. Other than that it looks great! Did you model the suit? If so, it looks great, but maybe you should sharpen some of the edges, like the chest and arms, and add some more thickness so it doesn’t look like it is a single thin sheet of metal in places like the hole for the arms to go in the torso and the legs. Great job, keep it up!
First off, fantastic.
But given you suspect the shader might be lacking and in order to accurately tweak your shader, need “before and after” shots as Not of the entire model but smallerpatches to observe changes. At this stage, it appears to have a plastic laquered look. yet with a depth of sheen, like some of better car renders.
what a cool work!
Man James did you model this suit your self??? If so IMPRESSIVE:) If not the shaders are just as impressive to my eye. Seems the other guys above are picking on the red and yellow parts but for me if anything could use a little more work it seems like the dark metal inner parts are lacking some reflection like scratches or shinny milled parts or worn polished edges. The dark stuff just seems a bit dull at the moment. I cant recall if that is how it was in the film but it seems like if it was constructed from real metal it wouldn’t be quite a dull in there. Regardless if you animated this guy it would be pretty spot on and most wouldn’t know the difference:) Great job man!
IsaqueLC - Thanks, you’re right! I’ve collected some references of the Hulkbuster suit from the film, and it does look like my material is a bit too bright and shiny. I didn’t model this, but I will try to thicken up the thin areas. The textures included emission maps for the chest and eyes and other areas, so I’ll be sure to add those next. Thanks for your other ideas as well!
FXR - I agree! Certain angles remind me of a shiny, plastic action figure- not necessarily bad looking, but not a very solid, heavy metal look either. Looking at my reference images, it seems to me that the large Hulkbuster suit has a different look to it than the more normal Iron Man suits- less specular reflections, softer highlights. Thanks for the help!
DerekG - Thanks, Derek! I actually found this model on Steam’s Source Filmmaker Workshop here. It was originally made by this guy here. I originally tried extracting the file from the SFM version, but part of the mesh around the knees didn’t make the transfer for some reason. So I extracted it from the original file instead. You can see the missing part of the armour in a couple of the above images. About the dark parts of the suit- I’m not sure if those should be shiny or not. The specularity map shows the dark parts as being kind of dull, so I just went with that to try to give some variety to the materials. The maps are kind of small (1024x1024), so they don’t hold up very well to close ups, anyway. And yes, I do hope to animate this guy! I think I’ll put up a little teaser video on my channel next week.
Looks pretty cool! It might help to add in some fresnel. I would recommend the layer weight node with a color ramp to control the amount. It also might be worth looking into physically based techniques that include roughness in the equation.
Thanks, TARDIS Maker! I’ll try out your suggestions, as well!
I’ve included the images above, as well as some turntable renders, in a new video I uploaded a couple days ago. Sort of to show the model off, as well as to find out what people want to see in a future video.
So far it’s looking like I’ll use both models, which is what I wanted to do, anyway.
Strob discusses textures and shaders in his excellent video here:
And if you haven’t seen the original iron baby video, definitely check it out!
Thanks for posting those links, Zeke! I had seen Iron Baby years ago, but completely forgot about it while working on this project. I’ll have to revisit them both. Thanks again!