Help with Maleable Iron Texture / Material

[Stuartwood999]

Hi.

I'm a newbie with keyshot and I am having trouble getting a realistic looking texture for Malleable Iron. I have found several cast iron type textures but none of them seem to come close.

I have found the attached rendered image on google and its pretty much exactly what I want to achieve.

Can anybody give me some tips or point me in the right direction please.

Thank in advance.

Stuart

[Eric Summers]

Hi Stuart,

Welcome to the forum! We all started somewhere and this forum is a great place for help!

I didn't have a chance to try this, but it looks like you might be able to achieve that look using one of the Noise textures (Fractal or Texture) for your bump map. If you have KeyShot 8 Pro you could use the texture and displace your geometry with it.

[mattjgerard]

Yep. Lightings going to be a critical factor there as well, to be able to see the depth of the texture. Can surely be done, take a look at some of the MoldTech bump maps too. Scaled correctly they might get you there.

[Eric Summers]

Can surely be done, take a look at some of the MoldTech bump maps too. Scaled correctly they might get you there.

I thought about that too, especially some of the ones from the Downloads section on the KeyShot website. The only catch with those is that since they're image based, you might see texture seams.

[mattjgerard]

Yeah, and the mapping might get a bit weird too. Procedural would def be the best way to do it now that I think of it. I thought the mold-tech ones were seamless? I havent' played with them much.

[Eric Summers]

I use them a lot and now that I think about it, I've never run into an issue with them. But I've never used any of the more "dramatic" ones, so weirdness might just blend in. But it would make sense that they would be seamless. I like to avoid image based textures if I can just because I like the control I get with the procedurals.

[Stuartwood999]

Thanks for the pointers.

I shall spend some time experimenting and report back.

Thanks

Stuart

[Stuartwood999]

Hi

Thanks so much for the pointers.

I located the Mold-Tech Stipples materials made some modifications after watching some more keyshot videos and here's the result.

There are a few areas to look at, but i'm really happy.

I need to look at a ground plane / work surface to sit it on next but I guess that's just adding some model geometry.

Thanks again.

[Eric Summers]

Nice! That's looking really good. 

[Stuartwood999]

Thanks Eric.

I have solved my base geometry question by adding a ground plane. I love this software !

[mattjgerard]

That's looking really good!

[RRIS]

If you want some more color variation you can use the same bumpmap for diffuse color (maybe with a color adjust utility inbetween). And maybe even better, you can vary the roughness with that as well.

[Stuartwood999]

Thanks, I'll try that too.