Material graph tutorial

[cadjockey]

Hi guys

Really liking v6 so far but I'm really struggling to understand/get the most out of material graphs.  Are there any tutorials/how to's/guides/advise on what everything does and how to layer up and combine the various items?

I'm struggling to get a really good two coat sparkling metallic pearlescent powder coat with silver metal flakes for one.
Similar to this http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_3QwOQ9KkdW8/S_aafERhqfI/AAAAAAAAGqs/Lz6mXQKt_ik/s1600/

Metallic paint alone is always too shiny or metal flakes not quite right

Anyone have any thought?

Rich

[fario]

+1

[richardfunnell]

I am not a automotive specialist, and hopefully they chime in with their own tricks, but here's my attempt at getting a metallic paint with more visible metal flakes.

I started with a Metallic Paint material, and set the base color to dark blue, and metallic flake to a lighter blue. Increasing metal coverage to .8 helped make the flake more visible on the material.
Instead of using the material graph, I took a noise texture into Photoshop, added some color to it, erased the dark values, and saved it as a PNG with transparency. This specific texture was downloaded from BittBox (http://www.bittbox.com/freebies/freebie-friday-9-seamless-noise-patterns). I applied this texture as the metal color, and increased the brightness to 5 to really make it pop. Using the texture gave the metallic flake a bit more randomness as well as intensity. Creating your own textures will help you get the exact appearance you want.

You could also apply the texture as a metallic label, and use the same brightness trick to make it stand out. I've attached a quick screenshot and KSP file. Hope this helps!

[mertmg]

Thank you Richard...