I have got a model, it’s sort of like a statue. I have painted some stone noise onto the entire thing as a diffuse map. The normal map is from the high res sculpt that I baked onto the low res model in zbrush. I’m new to rendering, have been working with high res sculpts and game models up until this point. I’m struggling figuring out how to make the diffuse stone texture look realistic in cycles. Either the diffuse texture is barely noticable or if I add a contrast node it makes the diffuse texture too noticable. In either case it either ends up looking like metal or nothing at all, definitely do not look stony.
Here is what I got currently, anyone who could help me understand how to setup a realistic stone shader. The stone texture is black and white so I guess you should be able to use the diffuse as a spec map too. But I’m not sure how to connect everything together.
The Normal Map node must not be connected to the Displacement input of the Material Output node (mind the color coding). You should connect the Normal Map node to the Normal inputs of the individual shaders.
Other than that: A screenshot of your render result would help… Up to this point we have no idea what your maps look like and what effect they create.
Thanks, ok here’s what I currently got, in the right corner you can see the diffuse texture I’m using. Reasonably bright right, but in the viewport he is almost pitch black. Look at the tiles well lit, I would want to end up with something that looks like this:
try to set the normal map node to ‘Object space’, set the strength to 1 (or lower) as IkariShinji pointed out, check uv’s from the mesh, and if mesh normals are correct.
If none fixes the scene, post the blend file for a better look.
Ok I modified the lights a bit and brightened up the texture a bit, apparently blender “blender object space” is the correct setting. Looks the best anyway. Now for the specular lights, to have the diffuse stone texture control the specular highlights I would connect the roughness on the glossy node with the color on the diffuse texture?
You’ll probably get better results if you mix some mean value for the roughness with just a bit of your diffuse texture. (I think something between 0.15 and .4 as the mean roughness value will be ok)
Also, stones are not so glossy, and most of them can react to light as dielectric materials. So you should use a ‘fresnel’/‘layer weight’ to drive the mix of the diffuse and the glossy.
What kind of light are you using? is it a point lamp? And what is it size?
I don’t understand what you mean by mixing some mean value for the roughness from my diffuse texture. Also not sure what a fresnel layer weight is, started using these nodes yesterday.
For the light I thought the most realistic light would be some small opening in the ceiling where moonlight would fall in. But it’s still not strong enough for you to be able to see the face of the statue properly so I placed a light under him litting him from below, will make him look spooky too.
I’m inspired by this clip, the overall atmosphere.
Would love to have some techno music in the background as this mask hovers in the scene. xD Anyway if you could explain in more detail how I make this guy look more like stone I would appreciate it, how I connect the nodes because I’m a total scrub. :no:
