Metal materials

In this tutorial we’ll explain how to make 3 realistic metal materials (steel, gold and chrome) without using any additional plug-ins.

Steel

To start, open the material editor and select the first empty material slot. Name the material “Steel”. Next, in Shader Basic Parameters, change the shader model from Blinn to Multi-Layer. Then set the Diffuse color to black (R: 0 G: 0 B: 0).

Now let’s turn our attention to 2 Specular layers just beneath. They will define how shiny our metal is going to be. So, set the 1. layer Level to 120, Glossiness to 48, Anisotropy to 50 and finally the Orientation to 15. Second layer settings should be like this: Level: 102, Glossiness: 17, Anisotropy and Orientation: 0. Leave the both layer colors to their default values.

Now let’s concentrate on the main element of every kind metal material, reflection. To do that scroll down the material options to Maps sections and click on the Reflection map slot. A new window will appear; that is the Material/Map browser. Select the Mask map, and you will be greeted with 2 new map slots.

Click on the first, “Map” slot, and in the Material/Map browser select Raytrace. Go back up a level and click on the “Mask” slot. This time select the Falloff map in the browser. After this, you should get something like this in the Mask map options:

Final part of the material is setting the Falloff map options. This map is what actually defines how the environment is reflected in the material. So, once in the Falloff map settings, change the Falloff Type to Fresnel. Then move the left anchor in the Mix Curve upwards (just a little bit more than half of the height).

Now just apply the finished material to the object of your choice and hit render.

Gold

Select another empty material slot and rename it to Gold. Then, change the shader (in Shader Basic Parameters) to Metal. Set the Diffuse color to R: 251 G: 224 B: 131, Specular Level to 357 and Glossiness to 30.

As with the previous material, set the Reflection map to Mask (Map slot: Raytrace, Mask slot: Falloff). In the Falloff map options swap the places of the white and black colors (white should be in the upper place). The, in the Mix Curve options, move the right anchor point to about a half of height.

With this, the gold material is finished. So lets move to the chrome material.

Chrome

Rename an empty material slot to Chrome. Change the shader model to Metal and Diffuse color to R: 205 G: 205 B: 205. Set the Specular Level to 101 and Glossiness to 57.

Now, the main difference between this and other metal materials covered in this tutorial is that Chrome material uses just a Raytrace map in its Reflection slot (all its settings are left at their default values).

That’s it, the materials are done. Here’s couple of renders of these 3 materials: