Suggestions for a suede/leather shader?

harlequin-3d

Any suggestions for a good suede and/or leather shader?
Premade or how to make your own.

Thanks

evilproducer

Have any reference images so that we know how aged or creased it is?

evilproducer

Here's a very basic shader. I didn't add any creasing, just some noise functions and mixers for color, highlight and bump variance. Rendered with GI.

Design Acrobat

ShareCG has several seamless textures.

JoeMamma2000

Take a photograph of some real suede and use it.

harlequin-3d

I don't think the texture is the problem. It's just way too dark, like looking at a blackhole.
But I have no idea why. I have a lot to learn about the shader room.

1. Here is what it looks like in DS with just the headlamp
2. Current carrara shader settings. Anything jump out as wrong?

Thanks again

evilproducer

harlequin-3d said:

I don't think the texture is the problem. It's just way too dark, like looking at a blackhole.
But I have no idea why. I have a lot to learn about the shader room.

1. Here is what it looks like in DS with just the headlamp
2. Current carrara shader settings. Anything jump out as wrong?

Thanks again

I see the problem and the good news is that it's a simple fix. I don't know how D/S does it's shaders, but in Carrara, to control the specularity, you use two functions. Highlight and Shininess. Highlight is how bright the specular effect appears and Shininess defines the spread of the specular effect.

The easy fix is to get rid of the black color in the Highlight channel, since black would be a zero highlight. Replace it with a lighter color or use the pulldown menu that says Color in the Highlight channel and switch it to a 1-100 value slider. The brighter the color or the higher the value in the Highlight channel will make the specular effect brighter.

Next, you'll probably need to adjust the shininess. The higher the value on the slider, the sharper the highlight. The lower the value, the more spread you'll get.

Looking at your picture, (using 1-100 sliders in both channels) I would use a Highlight of maybe 50% to start with. I would set the Shininess slider to around 5% to start. You can adjust from there until you get the specular effect you're going for.

A more advanced option would be to check the material files that came with the model, and see if there is a specular map. If there is, you would want to load it (using the pulldown menu to select image map, and then click the top file icon next to the empty thumbnail.) into the Highlight channel and leave the shininess as a slider. You can adjust the brightness of the map using the brightness slider. For extra fun, you can use a multiplier with your image map and a color to add a colored specular effect. You can also use just a plain colorin the field as well.

evilproducer

It loooks lioke there also is a slight reflection. You could copy and paste the map in the bump channel to the reflection channel and turn the brightness slider below the thumbnail down to around 10% or less to start.

wetcircuit

Put a cellular shader in the Highlight channel, and turn the value in your Shininess channel to 0 to spread the shine across the surface and reveal more texture.

I have a video tutorial on my site (sig below) that shows how to create specular skin effects.

This isn't the same kind of leather, but you get the idea....

harlequin-3d

Thanks very much guys. Made some major progress thanks to your suggestions.

Top: Standard highlight and shininess w/ some reflection
Bottom: First shot at cellular function as highlight...needs some more work

Rareth

harlequin-3d said:

Thanks very much guys. Made some major progress thanks to your suggestions.

Top: Standard highlight and shininess w/ some reflection
Bottom: First shot at cellular function as highlight...needs some more work

actually that first image looks great just a tad too reflective