How to Create Translucent Metallic Plastic

Started by MS388, July 02, 2019, 11:38:27 AM

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MS388

Hi everyone, I am new to this forum and this is my first post. I'm hoping to get some ideas about how to create a convincing injection molded plastic with metal flake in it. I'm stumped. I think the default soft shiny plastic looks very accurate, but when I want to add metallic flake to it, there seems to be no option. I am either forced to create the translucent plastic as a solid color with no metal flake or if I want the metallic effect, I have to change the material to metallic paint and then I lose the translucency and the part looks like an opaque painted surface. I have tried applying the camouflage texture to the translucent plastic material and this works, but the flakes are not reflective because you cannot link a metal material to the texture. I can only make the camouflage flakes gray and they look flat. I also thought that the new flakes shader in keyshot 8 would make it possible to create this material by embedding the metal flakes within the volume of the part like a real injection-molded metallic plastic, but the flakes do not show through the translucency at all. I cant find any videos that explain how to achieve this either. Any help is greatly appreciated!

MMatias

Hi. Do you have any reference image of what you want to achieve?
I did this test quickly this morning, is it somewhere close of what you want? It could you some more love and tweaking on the plastic or metal according to your needs but it's basically a combination of all the methods you described.

Cheers,

Mati