Maybe someone can help me. Is there any way to get a very fine grained noise? I have tried many iterations of noise to achieve metallic paint. I turn the noise size down all the way, still too big.
I will include a picture. Noise used is Voronoi. Smallest I could possibly tweak it. It is still too big. I have tried clouds, stucci, and different noise. If someone can look at the picture, and tell me if that is as fine grained as you can get. At least I will know I did the best I could, and leave it at that. I think the metallic car paint could look good if a finer grain noise is achievable.
I need more eyes to tell me if I’m going in the right direction. If I can do a good job, maybe I can build a small library. Maybe it will compliment the already awsome job Sonix did on his. I’m trying to layer noise textures to see if it reduces grain size. Maybe I’m the only who cares.
BTW, the renders will be Yafray. I can try Blender Internal also if anyone even cares to use these. I would like to do more cars. They might come in handy, maybe not.
If there is a more appropriate forum maybe this can move. I wasn’t quite sure where to do this.
Thank you for the suggestion. Unfortunately, It is not working for me. I size it up or down, and it still renders the same. I tried going to extremes with it and no change. Following image will show the noise still too big. I tried over-rendering and scaling down in the Gimp. I don’t think it really matters. I just can’t seem to get the noise a finer grain.
Yeah I’ve messed around with noise a little, not sure if this will help you but here is a thought to try. In the F5 buttons window, click on the “Map Input” tab, you’ll see your mapping options, once there try changing the sizeX, sizeY and sizeZ number buttons to tweak the noice size. More is less in this case a bigger size should give you smaller noise.
Hope that helps.
Also a quick note about procedurals, correct me if I’m wrong but I don’t believe they are affected by the mapping settings the same way as textures. For example, mapping a procedural to UV or cube will not effect it, nor I believe will moving or scaling the texture space.
In the F5 buttons window, click on the “Map Input” tab, you’ll see your mapping options, once there try changing the sizeX, sizeY and sizeZ number buttons to tweak the noice size. More is less in this case a bigger size should give you smaller noise.
I’d try the Size X,Y,Z buttons and see how that goes. I used it to great effect making my anisotropic Gus model. It delivered the sort of micro grain needed to make the effect believable.
Also a quick note about procedurals, correct me if I’m wrong but I don’t believe they are affected by the mapping settings the same way as textures. For example, mapping a procedural to UV or cube will not effect it, nor I believe will moving or scaling the texture space.
Size and Offset do affect procedurals but not the Flat, Cube, Sphere… options. The coordinate buttons (Glob, Orco etc) deliver interesting results but you’d want to know how they’d respond to animation if you intend to animate.
On a separate note, your headlights look really grainy too. You don’t have AO or something happening and affecting the render do you?
My best advice is, you are not going to see the metallic effect, unless you are up close. Very close.
Now a possibility is to use a “sparkle layer” A layer that uses scattered pixels with a transparent background. Set that layer to emit more than the base paint.
Try enlarging the entire project. Then tweak the texture.
This is an interesting effect to achieve. I was thinking of the same thing the other day, for snow covered scenes. Add a little sparkle somehow.
Thanks for all of the tips everyone, and for the excellent responses. I have tried to get the grain smaller. I really just have to study metallic paint more. This may take awhile.
Below is the results of reducing grain size and color a little. I have to believe the first critique on the paint would be too grainy.
This is one using Spin’s idea. The “sparkles” only show around highlights and reflections. It is a very good idea. Maybe I can work with it. Maybe the grain is still too big? Still it is pretty subtle, and may provide a good solution. The material was heavily tweaked from Spin’s original.
One thing that might help is to recall that a material can have several textures associated with it simultaneously. Each texture can manipulate different things about how the object finally “looks,” and each one is applied in-sequence, in controllable amounts.
When I think, “metallic,” that says to me that the texture will exhibit a particular specularity. There will be flecks or glints visible. I also expect a certain treatment of the surface normals, a certain “scratchiness” or fine, linear texture. It doesn’t say anything about color, because metals can be painted. The surface characteristics which tell me, “this object is made of metal,” are on-top-of and in-addition-to whatever else my eye perceives about the object.
Consequently, I suggest that you explore the idea of layering multiple textures within the object’s material(s) to achieve your result.
I’ve done a brief study on the way metallic paint reacts to light. I have a preliminary result using only a spec ramp(brief study). I’m starting to believe a convincing result can be achieved with no noise at all. The way the shaders react to light and the inherent “graininess” of the render itself, may be very satisfactory. Damn, I should have done this stuff before. I have been trying to wing it by trial and error. Education is your friend. I thought I was smart enough to figure it out myself. Silly me.
Is this looking better? I guess this is old hat to most.
I animated it, however it doesn’t looks as good as the RAW uncompressed original. The following is DIVX… Click here to watch Metallic-Paint (3.58MB) Best when viewed at ORIGINAL size
Hmm, I think the spec might be too tight now. Somewhere between the two might be better IMHO. If you played with the spec shaders a bit more you could get candy apple (do a red version - wow!) or pearlescent effects.
Now get to work on those windows, do a little panel work (it’s just like real life, the better the paint job, the more it shows up the imperfections ) and can you drop it down slightly so it sits on the floor (look especially at the shadow under the back wheel).
Nicely done. I haven’t tried anything like a vehicle yet. … one day…
I could be wrong about this but I think some of the newer cars are painted with more then one layer of color and also have small metal flakes in the paint to give it that glitter effect.
I would look it up myself but very sleepy at the moment.
Just for AndyD. It’s not candy apple(that will be for another car). But I liked this. Red, with the orange and yellow. I think it does give that hint of being more than one color layer. Oh yeah, for the record, this car will end up blue in the final. That is why I have been concentrating on that color.
) and can you drop it down slightly so it sits on the floor (look especially at the shadow under the back wheel).
