I’m trying to make a leaf material where the leaf has a lighter (yellow-green) color around the edges. I’ve kind of got it working, the material looks allright in Material Preview - but not when it’s rendered. I’m not sure how I can fix this without remaking the whole material… can someone take a look at the blend file?
The upper part is the material in preview mode.
LeafShaderTest.blend (1.4 MB)
Sorry but that was not quite what I was looking for.
I want the colors to be similar to the leaves in the upper half of the image but with a soft lighter edge. Kind of like this: https://apps.extension.umn.edu/garden/diagnose/plant/images/hackberry/abiotic/salt3_600px.jpg
That material indeed adds a highlight along the edge, but it was a bit too subtle for what I was after. But it did have a nice sheen. I combined it with another material I’m experimenting with and got this (right leaf).
The material for the right leaf:
It’s almost perfect, but the problem is that the crease in the middle also gets a thin highlight, which is not quite what I want. It depends on what values you use in the bevel node (which is a very expensive node to use according to the documentation). A workaround could be to give the middle part a different material, but I wish I didn’t have to do that.
Might have to move on soon unless someone has another idea. Thanks for the help!
Check first with the Normal Map added in…
You might be able to add a Gradient texture set to Spherical, and use Object Coordinates…
Not only does the Color-Ramp add some color gradation, but the mapping node can control the size of the central darker green…
Something like this might work for you…
Sorry, can you clarify what you mean?
On one of your Leaves in the original download, you had a normal map, I think 2nd from the right…
Never mind I just checked, it just looked like a normal map…
It’s a little less precise around the edges than the one I made but it should be less demanding on the computer, and if you spend some time tweaking the shape of the gradient, and the color ramp, it looks good on this simple leaf.
I’m satisfied for now with this. Thanks for the help!
I just realized that with some Texture Coordinate node outputs, the material will look different depending on the object’s rotation. Keep this in mind!
You could try to make a special purpose UV channel where you manipulate the UV to take advantage of the U location to create a gradient from that. May have to change the topology to serve that purpose.
