I am trying to create worn / scratched edge-areas on my rendered model, giving the impression that the item has seen some ‘real-world’ use and been scratched up a bit.
I found this tutorial, which shows the effect I want to achieve, but following this tutorial apparently no longer works:
I also found this tutorial, but it suddenly jumps into the process at a point that is beyond my current understanding of Blender:
In the second video, the presenter begins by saying “…I’ve modeled this basic object… I’ve also unwrapped it and set up a basic material with ambient occlusion and a bevel sheet”.
I am a total beginner with this kind of work with materials. Can someone point me to guidance that will allow me to follow this second tutorial? In other words, how do I “unwrap” and set up “ambient occlusion” and a “bevel sheet”?
Final question: Is this the best way to do this worn-edges effect? Or is there a preferred method that is documented somewhere else?
The first method is the one that I prefer, but it doesn’t work with eevee, if you use cycles render engine it should be fine tho…
Sadly there isn’t a perfect way to do that in blender, there are several options all with their pro and cons, and if one doesn’t work for your specific case you have to fallback to another one.
About the second method how it’s presented is a bit confusing, but basically the idea is to manually paint the edges. If that’s really new to you maybe look for tutorials about unwrapping and texture painting.
Anyway, that method will work with cycles and eevee, but it’s a bit slow to setup, for something more automatic the first one is probably better !
As an alternative to using nodes, you might consider getting a copy of Substance Painter on Steam ( non subscription version ) and using it to create the mask. Or the entire material for that matter. ( edit ) also Fluent Materializer, a Blender plugin has some nice functions for edge wear and other stuff.
Thanks sozap. You motivated me to struggle through the first tutorial, and I managed to get everything to work except the bump-map at the end.
I have uploaded a .blend and would be very appreciative if anyone can add a working bump-map node, so that I, and others, can see how the complete-method works.
For anyone else attempting to follow the node-based-bevel method of creating worn-edges on objects in Blender 3.6 LTS (the version I use), it’s useful to know:
The ‘Viewer’ node referred to (very obliquely) in the video is actually called the 'Emission node" in 3.6
The “mixRGB” node is called the “Mix Color” node in 3.6
The initial result of applying the “Dot Product” node is almost imperceptible (unlike in the video) and may give the first-impression that it hasn’t worked. Keep going.
The bump map stage does not seem to work as described in the video.
I’m using blender 4.0, the blend might not open correctly in 3.6 but it should be possible to adapt the nodes.
Basically I’m doing exactly the same thing as you did for the color, we mix the metal part and the paint part using the mask you made out of the dot product. And all that goes into a bump node.
If all that is still too complex, maybe study the bump node on it’s own with other tutorials so you get a better idea of how it works.
Thanks for all your help, Sozap. I switched to Blender 4 and everything’s working now.
I also found another procedural-method that creates the effect of a paint-layer that has flaked-off the surface of a metal object. The ‘paint’ layer can be added-to, or removed, by using either a black or white paint in the ‘Texture Paint’ workspace. Here is my test:
