Distressed Metal Material
By Neil Blevins
Created On: Apr 9th 2024
Updated On: Dec 3rd 2024
Software: Blender or 3dsmax (vray)
As many of you know, I have been a 3d studio user since the
mid 90s, and was planning on staying that way until a few years back
when Autodesk decided to make their software rental only. While I'm
still using my final perpetual license of max, I'm exploring other
options, one of which is Blender. After learning the basics, I wanted
to try and replicate some of my 3dsmax work, and so decided to start by
recreating my favorite metal material. I have used variations of this
metal on hundreds of projects, including the Story Of Inc, Testudo, and
plenty of others. So this video will show off my results recreating
this metal created in 3dsmax using vray inside Blender's Cycles render
engine.
Reference
Here's the material we are trying to emulate in CG. A distressed metal
that's covered with dirt, grime and has some mild scratches and
weathering. The kind you'd see on any outdoor machinery, screws, poles.
The picture below is the metal parts of a car's trailer hitch.
Software Agnostic Material
The basic ingredients are as follows:
- Shading: Metal shader
- Color: Greyish
- Spec: Low gloss reflections (blurry) with variation of some areas
more reflective and some less
- Bump: Small scratches and noise + large scale distortion
Blender
or 3dsmax (vray) Examples
Here's the Blender Material Graph
Go here for a higher res one.
And here's the graph for the environment...
Here's the blend file, Blender 4.2: distressed_metal_blender.zip
Here's the max file, 3dsmax 2022: distressed_metal_3dsmax_vray.zip
Watch the video for in indepth explanation of the materials in both
Blender and 3dsmax:
