Material request
ianbennett
Posts: 0
Hello everyone
I am wondering if anyone happens to have a copy of a good clay render material they would be willing to share, have a download link to, or offer any tips on the best material setup to create it myself.
Any help with this will be greatly appreciated
Ian...
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Hi Ian,
welcome to the forum & Carrara. :)
Do you mean wet or dry clay? What do you want to apply it to? A pot?
Should be relatively easy though.
How long have you been using Carrara?
I'd start by creating the object or something similar, put it in the scene (indoors/outdoors)
with default lighting, add a preset shader to the object, and adjust the shader parameters
and lighting to get what you want. Lots of trial & error. :)
You can do it yourself, no need to spend money you don’t need to spend, or use cookbook formulas. All it takes is a little knowledge and a little thought…and some clay. So go out and get a some clay. I’ll wait…
No, seriously, the best way to develop a shader for anything is to get it in your hands and look at it. Second best is get a photo.
So get some clay and hold it up to the light. What do you see?
It has color. That’s obvious. If you hold it up to a bright light, does light pass thru it, or is it totally opaque? Well, you can see that no light passes thru. It’s not transparent like a window, and light doesn't pass thru. Can you see stuff on the other side? No.
Okay, so now you know it has color, and has no “translucency”, because light doesn't pass thru it (trans - thru, and lucent - light). And it’s not “transparent” like a window. But one more thing you’ll probably notice is that it kind of glows around the edges. It’s very subtle, but it’s there. That’s because light enters the clay, bounces around inside, then comes back out and into your eyes. But it only does that around the surface, forming a kind of glow around the edges. That’s called “subsurface scattering”, because it’s light scattering under the surface then coming back out.
We also know that clay has a highlight that is spread around the surface broadly. And it also has a slightly bumpy surface, though it's very slight.
Now, keep in mind that shaders are only a part of what convinces viewers about a material. If you want people to believe it's clay, it generally has to be shaped like clay. Which means a big blob with a flat bottom and a lot of indentations where fingers have been poking at it. And of course the lighting has to be right.
Anyway, here's a quick shot at some clay. Took a sphere, ran it thru bullet to get the blobby effect, did some quick modelling to get the pokey fingers effect, and added some bump. The rest of the shader was pretty much as I described, though the subsurface scattering was very subtle.
The result is kinda sucky, looks a little too plasticy...but then again I broke my own rule and didn't use a reference.
Sorry but I think you mis-understand my request. I am not refering to the actual creation of material that looks like clay. I am actually refering to a terminology that is used within 3d which refers to a default material setup that is ideal for applying to all objects within a scene so it makes it easier to set up the correct lighting within your scene. The reason I ask for this is because the defualt grey material that is within carrara is not ideal for the process as it tends to offer a false representation of the lighting result.
Who told you to do that? To set up lighting???
Usually clay renders are used to show what a model looks like, without all the textures in the way.
Also, doesn't a clay render usually use ambient occlusion in addition to a matte shader to emphasize the edges or something?
Yeah, I think it's basically an AO solution. But you can simulate AO without running an AO solution by darkening the textures with a gradient in the corners, if that's what you're talking about.
In any case, IMO the clay render is not much more than a fancy gee-whiz effect that guys like to do because it looks kinda cool. Just an excuse to play. Yeah, it's kinda nice to exhibit a model, but otherwise....who the hell has time to replace all the textures in their scene with some default gray just to tweak the last 2% of their lighting, if that? Most people would do a lot better if they learned how to do lighting in the first place. Like I say, just an excuse to play. Present company excepted of course.
Most lighting is shader dependent anyway. If you set up lighting that looks nice on a gray matte surface, when color and other shading effects are added, it's going to change how everything looks.
Just so I can say I tried it, I did. I found a simple care model with multiple shading domains, created a shader that's so simple it numbs the mind, set one light- Hell, it's easier to look at the screen shots. It's taken me longer to type this than actually set the scene.
...And the shader.
I did use an infinite plane with a shadow catcher as well.
Ian,
This clay shader was offered on the old Carrara forum Freepozitory.
I don't know if it will suit your purposes, but since it's simple I'll post a screen shot of the settings.
The original Freepozitory posting was here:
http://forumarchive.daz3d.com/viewtopic.php?t=79008
Thanks everyone for your views and ideas. It does give me more to work with and yes I do understand the concepts of lighting and rendering etc but just looking at developing an experiment to see if an idea i have will work and I have heard so many pros talk of the "clay render" idea I thought I would just give it a go and see what it is all about at the same time... I guess that's how I learn.. the hard way LOL.