Plastic, Textured Material with a Metallic "Sheen" Underneath

[monson67]

New to KeyShot, here. I'm looking for some advice on how to create a material with some unique characteristics.

It's a plastic (or vinyl) material with a woodgrain diffuse texture, a modified version (Photoshop B&W, Levels, Curves) for the specular texture and similar bump texture. Pretty straightforward thus far.

However, the physical material itself has a subtle metallic, reflective quality underneath it (almost as if the woodgrain pattern was printed on top of chrome). So certain areas (like lighter-colored parts of the woodgrain) have a "shimmer" or a "sheen" to it, and it helps make the colors there pop. But again, it's subtle.

This is the part I'm struggling with. I can make the Material Type "Metal", but then it's just way too much. At certain viewing angles it looks perfect, but any other angle, it's way too reflective and blown-out.

Any help would be much appreciated.

[Chad Holton]

Hello, welcome to the forum! Do you have some reference images you could share?

[NM-92]

I don't know if i fully understand what you're asking, so reference images as Chad says would be of help, but i think that the material you're after can be achieved by layering different types of materials with opacity maps to control where they show up, so you can have your wood material and only set it to metal just in the spots you want with an opacity map.

Check out this video, it may help to understand the material graph a bit more so you can play with it. I hope it helps.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5umbUNOT6HI

[monson67]

Thank you both for your replies. Sorry for the delay. I watched the video you shared with me, NM-92. While it was helpful in learning more about the Material Graph, I didn't have any more luck in getting the look I'm going for.

In the images I've posted below, the first two images have one material (my attempt at the metallic version), and the last two images have a basic, plastic material. The first image is the exact look I'm going for, but as I rotate the camera, it just catches way too many reflections (seen in image #2). The very last image is how I would like it to look (although with the subtle, metallic sheen seen in image #1) while viewing at different camera angles.

[NM-92]

I've made some quick tests. I don't have an equal wood texture as the one shown in your example so it may look a bit different. As i said before, i tried to make some parts "pop" with a metal material type, but instead of applying it to the whole plane i have limited it's visibility with an opacity map, so part of the wood isn't affected. Maybe you can try and play with this method to solve your issue. Let me know if you have any questions, though we should wait Eric to provide us a fantastic solution with his utility nodes methods  . Cheers !

[richardfunnell]

If you're not happy with the reflection but are happy with the material, change your HDRI Environment.

Think of lighting as a photo studio: if you don't like a reflection, move the corresponding light. Your render results are a combination of both materials and lighting, and we give you the ability to adjust both as needed

[soren]

If the viewing direction is a problem, you may want to try to use a color gradient texture in the specular channel and set the gradient type to "view". There you can tweak the strength of the specular reflection depending on viewing angle.

Søren

[DMerz III]

This was probably covered already, but try utilizing the "roughness" channel as a mapped layer. Meaning, instead of using the slider, take a b&w image of your wood map, and place it on the "Roughness slider's checkboard icon" you can get some higher detail in wood grain that way. White areas in the map will equal a higher roughness, and black (darker) values will be more "shiny".