Hi there!
Here I'm trying to create some metals and I would like some input from more experienced users.
I'm not new to CG, but I'm new to unbiased physically correct renderers. My crappy hardware wasn't allowing me to experiment much with those, until Octane came around
So, I went to create a copper material with oxidation flecks. Most metals exhibit colored reflections, so I had to create a RGB texture for the specular channel. The software I'm used to from my previous experiences, has basically two parameters for specularity: specular color and specular intensity, that are controlled separately. In Octane there's only a 'specular' slot, so how is the needed info extracted from the texture? I guess that the tex color saturation controls the tint of the reflection and the tex is converted to BW for intensity?
Here are the textures I used in this example.
The diffuse and normal are self-explanatory. The specular tex is tinted pink to give more pinkish reflections instead of orange, and I desaturated the oxidation spots to have a neutral (noncolored) reflection there and darkened them to lower the power of reflection. Does this sound logical?
Next I mixed the specular node with a RGB color to further control the tint of the reflection inside Octane. Don't mind the second pot, it's there just for company.
So, it would be nice if other users would chip in their tips on metal creation, or materials in general, so that newcomers (like me) could learn from them. There were some pleas for tutorials lately, so we could use this thread to gather tips and then extract a tutorial out of it? Anyway if you have the time and will, feel free to use the attached scene, modify it and then post your results and explanation here. Or add your own samples.
Just for the reference, here's a shot of this scene, that I think is kinda nice (its of lower quality because I didn't let it render long, but anyway)