[Music]
hi
this is vessel from chaos
in this video we'll go through the
process of setting up a metal material
in 3ds max and v-ray using the metallic
roughness workflow
first we'll take a look at how to set up
a basic metal material using that
workflow
we'll go over how the different
parameters affect the overall look and
feel of the material
next we'll look at how we can add some
surface imperfections and details to the
material
we'll also look at some of the preset
material options that come with the
installation of v-ray
finally we'll go over the process of
creating a metal material in a separate
software such as substance painter and
how we can export the textures from
there to use inside 3ds max and v-ray
with all that being said let's get
started
here in 3ds max we have a scene of a
small room maybe some sort of a tool
shed and we have a couple of robot dogs
as our main characters
let me start the interactive rendering
so we can see what the scene looks like
so far
at its current state i've shaded
everything in the scene except for the
bigger dog which has a default grey
v-ray material applied to it the goal of
today's tutorial is to set up the
shading for that dog and have our image
completed
in the real world different materials
can be classified into two major
categories
dielectric and conductive materials
dielectric materials are insulators such
as glass plastic wood leather and so on
conductive materials can conduct
electricity
examples of those are steel copper gold
in other words metals there is a great
blog post on the chaos.com website
called understanding metalness that goes
into greater detail about the pbr
workflow giving some great examples of
different metal materials
you're welcome to copy the link to the
blog post and give it a read yourself if
you're interested
alright let's go ahead and create a
metal material
i'll switch to a camera that is going to
give us a little bit closer view of the
object we're going to be shading
this dog consists of several separate
meshes
in the material editor we can create a
standard v-ray material and i'll apply
it to one of the dog's parts
as i mentioned earlier the idea of
representing dielectric and conductive
materials has been implemented into the
standard varying material through a
parameter called metalness
since we are going to set up a material
using the metalness roughness workflow
the first thing we need to do is to
switch the brdf to use roughness
and set the metalness parameter to 1.
the metalness parameter is a variable
that can be set to a value between 0 and
1 which implies there are different
levels of metalness in the real world
there are no different levels materials
are either metals or non-metals but we
can use the metalness value in the v-ray
material to map it with a texture and
create more complex metal materials for
example painted metal with scratches or
rusty spots on the metal surface and so
on
okay let's use the information from the
blockbuster table of metal materials to
recreate a gold material for example
so for gold we need to set the diffuse
to
243 for the red channel
201 for the green
and 104 for the blue
then set the reflection to pure white
and set the roughness parameter to a
lower value
roughness of 0 would represent a very
smooth mirror-like surface
alternatively a value of 1 would make
the surface very rough
so using the roughness parameter we can
adjust how smooth or brushed the metal
surface would look
and finally we need to set the index of
refraction value that corresponds to
this particular material to keep it as
physically accurate as possible
a value of 1.35 for gold
every material has a different ior that
could be measured
the refractive index dot info website
provides some physical measurements of
different materials
as i mentioned before we can use texture
maps to create more complex and
interesting metal surfaces
as an example i have a texture map here
which we can use to control the
metalness amount
this way in the places where the texture
is white
we'll have full metalness
and in the black areas we'll have
non-metal surface
that creates an interesting result
looks like the surface has a thin layer
of gold that started to peel off
we can go further and plug the same
texture into the reflection
and the diffuse which would give us
another different look
alright
there are a bunch of material presets
built into the v-ray material
so if i expand the drop down menu
you can see presets for several types of
metal materials
such as
gold copper silver chrome and so on
you can use those materials as a
starting point when you're building your
metal material
they already have the bright color and
ior value that we've seen from the
material table in the blog post in the
beginning of the video
one more place that we can get already
made metal materials is in the v-ray
material library
on the v-ray toolbar there is an icon of
four spheres which represents the
material library browser
if we open it there are all kinds of
materials we can choose from to use in
our scene
they are grouped into categories
that we can see here on the left
under the metal category there is a
number of metal materials to choose from
we can of course modify those materials
further to fit our needs
we could also use the cosmos browser to
get more metal materials as well
if we click on the cosmos icon to open
the browser
then click on the materials button and
here
there are over 200 materials to choose
from
again if we filter them by battle
we can get some high quality metal
materials to use in our scene
okay great
of course we can use an external
software package to create our textures
such as substance painter
i've used it to create textures for both
of the dogs
i'll walk you through my process of
creating those textures without going
into too much detail
here in substance painter i usually
start from some of the presets that come
with the software also there are some
complete materials called smart
materials that sometimes is exactly what
i want
or need to be modified slightly
i then add layer after layer of
scratches and dents surface
imperfections
slight color variation here and there
dirt and dust in certain places
the whole idea is to make the material
look worn out
after that i create several more metal
materials using the same approach and
apply them to the different body panels
this way there is some variation
throughout the whole object
in substance painter we can take a look
at the different channels for instance
the roughness
or the metallic
as you can see the metallic is mostly
pure white except for the certain areas
where there is some dirt on top of the
metal surface
we use this texture to plug it into the
metalness parameter of the v-ray
material later
so once the textures are all painted we
need to export them from substance
painter and bring them over to 3ds max
the export process is fairly
straightforward
we need to go file export textures to
bring the export window
we need to specify a location and choose
an output preset from the list
so if we scroll all the way down there
is a preset designed to export the
textures to be used in vray metallic
roughness workflow
we can choose that preset and click
export
now let's go back to 3ds max to set up a
material that uses those textures
okay let's create a new v-ray material
and a v-ray bitmap node
i'll assign the new v-ray material to
the mesh
and load the diffuse texture we exported
into the v-ray bitmap node
we have 5 textures corresponding to this
object in total
so let me copy the v-ray bitmap node
several times and start loading the rest
of the textures
the diffuse and emissive textures are
loaded as is
but for the roughness metallic and
normal textures we need to set the color
space type to none
this way there will be no gamma applied
to those textures
that is important to ensure that the
material renders correctly
basically every texture that tries a
data parameter needs to be set with no
gamma with its color space set to none
once we have all of the textures ready
to go we can plug them into their
corresponding slots
the normal map needs to go through a
very normal map node
we also need to click on the flip green
check box to make sure it displays
correctly in 3ds max then we can simply
plug it into the bump map slot and set
it to 100
next i'll make sure the material is set
to use roughness
and plug in the metallic texture into
the metallic slot
set the reflection color to pure white
and plug in the roughness map
then we can plug in the emissive texture
into the self-illumination slot
and check the composite camera exposure
checkbox
and finally the diffuse texture goes
into the diffuse mop slot
alright
as you can see the result we are getting
is slightly different than the one we
had in substance painter
reason for that is the lighting and
camera exposure are completely different
that's okay though
it just needs a little adjustment to
make it look nicer i think if we
brighten up the diffuse mop a little bit
it will be better
let's plug in a color correct node to
the diffuse map and brighten it up
okay that looks much better
the reflections still look a little too
sharp for my liking
so let's adjust the roughness map to see
what difference that would make
as i mentioned earlier a value of 0 for
the roughness would result in a very
shiny surface and a value of 1
would be very rough
so theoretically if we increase the
brightness of the roughness map it
should become less shiny
great we can also increase the
self-illumination multiplier for the
emissive map to make it more visible
perfect
i've used the exact same method to
create the materials for the rest of the
dog's body parts
let me go ahead and assign them real
quick
all right now that we have the dog all
shaded and ready to go we can simply do
a final render
i'll just leave all the render settings
to their default values and click the
render button
in this video we've explored the
metalness roughness workflow we went
over the process of setting up different
types of metal materials we've also
looked at some of the metal presets that
come with v-ray for 3ds max
and finally we've explored the process
of creating the metal materials for our
dog character in substance painter and
transferring them to 3ds max
i hope you enjoyed this tutorial and
found it useful and helpful thank you
for watching
[Music]
you