Best method of texturing a Cheeto

[evanerichards]

I have never found an object or surface I couldn't photo-realistically recreate in vray. Until now. I have tried every trick I know how for several days and I just can't get anything that looks close.

I need to recreate a Cheeto.

I've included a photo for reference.


Every render I make seems to look like plaster. I guess it's the sort of pitted spongelike material I can't recreate. Maybe not though. I've tried all kinds of displacements, bumps, material layering, subsurface materials, everything I can think of and I don't feel like I'm any closer. They mostly all look like this:


I'd love to get some advice from some vray users who are pro at creating complex materials.

[Morbid Angel]

Well a couple of suggestions I can send your way. First make sure your surface is what it needs to be, that is, it closely resembles the reference in both volume and detail. Its one of the things missing right now, they appear to have a layer of fine detail on top of the base geometry. The other thing is heavy subsurface scattering. You would need to create some sss there for sure, I would suggest try vray fast sss2 for that, and perhaps layering your shaders for the more orange layer could be something else.

[dougWilkinson]

The look development for food is the hardest of them all I think. The struggle always seems to come down to getting a model with enough micro polygon detail that it looks like it has all the cavities and air space inside. We usualy use as much out of zbrush, as much detail as possible. ideally you would want a vector displacement but that workflow is not great so maybe mudbox would be good.
The other thing is consider scattering some little random bits/blobs to make the dusty stuff feel more real.
Using procedurals is a slippery slope, they would take days to tweak and would never really look right.
Also consider shooting textures in a very controlled way, and painting out specular as much as possible, and then re-projecting them. Sometimes that's the easiest/best solution.

to truly make this surface right, we would need a 3d volumetric surface/shader support in vray. food like this is mostly air! maybe i'll ask vlado about that...

good luck!

[BenDel]

I had one to do some months ago...
- intensive Zbrush till perfect shape...
- macro photography for textures and high frequency details...
- MARI with the photo bank
- displace
- sss

I would say that the most important part (most difficult) is the modeling. in a way, others steps are classics.
High and low frequency details should appear in the Zbrush shape

everyone thought it would be easy, but I knew it went to be complicated

good luck,