Brushed Steel

[handron]

I have been reading online material for several days and experimenting with the information about a brushed steel material. However, I'm still very confused about the terminology of other apps and workflows and how it applies to Modo. My results are close to what I'm looking for but the results are still "off". The workflow of one sometimes contradicts the workflow of another.

Material in the Bump channel.
Material not in the Bump channel.
Material as diffuse color.
Material as reflection.
Use Normal map.
Don't use Normal map.
Material in Modo needs to be inverted for this but not that.

That is the type of information out there. What is the approach in Modo and on what channels should be what? I'm using V-ray 3.6 and Modo 12.2v1. I have a 2k tileable brushed steel material.

[vladimir.nedev]

Are you talking about setting up a material with maps from Substance Painter ?

What's with the "Material in Modo needs to be inverted for this but not that."
Only thing that works with inversion is the glossiness vs roughness, one is the inverse of the other.
So if you have a roughness map, you have to invert it.

If you post a link to a tutorial, I can tell you how it might be translated to V-Ray for Modo in particular.

Greetings,
Vladimir Nedev

[handron]

Thank you for the prompt reply.

I am trying to achieve a result using only Modo's Shader Tree. The tutorials that are online are so varied and spread about I will have to look them up again.

In the meantime, I add a V-ray material to my Material named "Ground Steel". I change the IOR to 10. Diffuse to black. Reflection to white. Does the V-ray material override the Modo material? Are some attributes of the Modo material overriding the V-ray material? The model is basically a rectangle. My material image map looks like an appliance brushed steel but a little courser. I'm just not sure where the proper place to put it is. Some tutorials had the image map in the Diffuse another tutorial had the image map in the Reflection, others say use a bump map and so on.

I was hoping another Modo user may have had success with this type of look and could share their settings. I can be a little dense and over-complicate things at times. I also looked for material online that I could purchase just so I could see what type of maps they have or how to use them. I've actually been trying to figure this out longer than I want to admit.

Ground Steel, nearly identical to brushed steel, is one of the main material looks we use for our machined parts. This particular application of it will have a very close up shot. In the past, I got away with simple blurred reflections at a distance for steel and ground steel. If I at least knew my setup was correct then I could blame the "odd" look on my image map.

[ingoerik]

Simply use Modos brushed steel material, for better results you can change the Modo material to a VRay material later with similar settings. Or you can buy this : https://richardyot.com/vizpak-products ... be aware though that there are some errors in the back face material settings, which can easily be fixed, otherwise they are good.

[vladimir.nedev]

Does the V-ray material override the Modo material?

Yes, if it's on top.

Are some attributes of the Modo material overriding the V-ray material?

If the Modo material is below the V-Ray material, only the smoothing options are used from the Modo material, which determine how Modo computes the normals for meshes with this material.

Some tutorials had the image map in the Diffuse another tutorial had the image map in the Reflection,

You don't use diffuse for metal unless you want to speed-up the render by faking it a bit.
This changes with the metalness option in V-Ray 4.x however, it does use the diffuse color as the color of the metal for incident reflection angles.

others say use a bump map and so on.

I am not sure what's the best way.
Sorry, I am not an artist and don't have detailed knowledge about materials.
I can only help with translating a V-Ray for 3dsMax/Maya/Sketchup/Rhino/etc material/tutorial to V-Ray for Modo.

My guess would be bump slot and enabling anisotropy on the material.
However, I downloaded a random brush metal from vraymaterials.de and it connects the texture to reflection color and reflection glossiness.

You can ask on our common forum, as this is not integration specific and maybe more people can chime in : https://forums.chaosgroup.com/forum/...-render-theory

Ground Steel, nearly identical to brushed steel, is one of the main material looks we use for our machined parts. This particular application of it will have a very close up shot. In the past, I got away with simple blurred reflections at a distance for steel and ground steel. If I at least knew my setup was correct then I could blame the "odd" look on my image map.

We do have a scanned material and scanning service, if you need more accuracy : https://www.chaosgroup.com/vrscans
It comes at an additional monetary cost however.

Greetings,
Vladimir Nedev

[handron]

Thanks all for the information. I've been spending the last couple of days trying to understand and apply your suggestions.

Ingoerik,
Thank you. That was a great idea. I'm dissecting the Vizpak brushed steel material. It got me close with a test scene with a block. I doesn't workout as well with my actual scene. More than likely I have to make UV maps to scale my slightly more complicated geometry.

Vladimir,
Outstanding support! I'm grateful for your personal help and approach to users. I'll be trying a couple of more approaches.