Soulburn Studios Art Lessons

Rubber Material
By Neil Blevins
Created On: Sept 23rd 2005
Updated On: July 5th 2026
Software: Blender or 3dsmax (vray) or 3dsmax (scanline)

Here's a tutorial on how to create a basic rubber material.

Reference

Here's a photo of real rubber (a car tire).

Reference 1

Software Agnostic Material

The basic ingredients are as follows:

Shading: Oren Nayar (since the material is rough)
Color: whatever color of rubber you're after
Spec: super low gloss reflections (blurry), low intensity
Bump: a high frequency noise

Ways to make it more realistic:

Add some specular variation with a triplanar with a more complex bitmap to show worn areas of the rubber.
Replace the bump procedural noise with a triplanar with a more complex bitmap to simulate more variation in the noise, including small knicks and scratches.

Here's the geometry I'll be using for the material tests:

Blender Example

Here's the shader for Blender...

So for the diffuse of the material, we want to use a special kind of shader called Oren Nayar. To do this, go into your Principled BSDF, go to the Diffuse section, and increase the roughness (this is diffuse roughness, not specular roughness) to a value above 0. That gives the material that super matte rubbery feel.

Then in the same node, set the color to whatever color you want (in this case, a dark grey to match the tire)

Then set the specular roughness (underneath the metallic parameter) to 0.7 or so, this will create a really glossy (blurry) and not too strong specular reflection.

Finally we want a small noisy bump. So create a Bump node, hook in a Noise Texture, and hook that into a Texture Coordinate node. Set the Coordinates to Object, so you apply the noise in 3d space. Increase the Scale of the noise to make the noise very small in comparison to your object. Reduce the strength of the Bump node so it's not too bumpy. Then hook the Bump node into the Normal input of both of your shaders.

Here's the resulting render.

Here's the blend file, Blender 5.1: rubber_material_blender.zip

3dsmax (vray) Example

Here's the shader for 3dsmax for the vray renderer renderer.

I start with a VrayMtl. We want the material to use a kind of Diffuse shader called Oren Nayar, and we do this in vray by setting the diffuse roughness, in this case to a value of 0.8, which gives your material that super matte rubbery feel.

Set the Diffuse Color to whatever color you want (in this case, a dark grey to match the tire).

For the Specular Reflection, reduce the glossiness (0.38) and make the reflection color a darker grey. This will create a really glossy (blurry) and not too strong specular reflection.

Now comes the bump, I just used a noise map set to fractal, and a very small bump size...

Here's the resulting render.

Here's the max file, 3dsmax 2022: rubber_material_3dsmax_vray.zip

3dsmax (scanline) Example

I started with a Standard material and gave it a dark grey color.

Then I changed the shader to Oren Nayar, and set the roughness to 0.7. The Oren Nayar shader brings some of the ambient color into the diffuse area of the shader, which simulates what a very rough material would do. Note, if you use the Oren Nayar shader inside of regular 3dsmax, sometimes you'll get unwanted colors on your material. For example, if you choose a blue color and use Oren Nayar, sometimes you'll see a slight yellow color on your material. This is a bug in max, and only appears in some lighting conditions.

Next comes the spec, Blinn with a wide base, but a small height. Also note, different types of rubber can be more or less specular, for example, the tire photograph above has very little specular, so adjust the strength to match your reference.

Figure 4a

Now comes the bump, I just used a noise map set to fractal, and a very small bump size...

Here's the resulting render.

Here's the max file, 3dsmax 2022: rubber_material_3dsmax_scanline.zip