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Create and assign an Arnold material to a model.
Type:
Tutorial
Length:
3 min.
Tutorial resources
These downloadable resources will be used to complete this tutorial:
Transcript
00:03
All right, we'll close the environment and effects dialogue
00:06
and go back to the slate material editor which I've got minimized down here.
00:10
I can restore that.
00:12
And now we want to create our first proper material
00:15
going to be a black plastic.
00:17
We can just take the existing standard surface and duplicate it.
00:20
Hold down the shift key and drag to make a duplicate.
00:24
And with that duplicate selected,
00:25
rename it
00:26
plastic black.
00:28
Now let's assign it to the chassis of our ham radio.
00:32
We can actually select objects directly in the Arnold render view.
00:36
And just to show that if I hover my mouse over that chassis and then click,
00:40
we'll see that that object was selected in the view ports
00:44
and we can see its modified panel parameters.
00:47
Then we can go over to our standard surface.
00:49
With that node selected, we can go up to the material editor toolbar
00:53
and click the button to assign the material to the selection
00:57
and then make some changes.
00:58
Go over to the base color. Click on the color swatch
01:02
and reduce the value.
01:04
Bring that down.
01:05
We want this to be black
01:07
but not perfectly black.
01:09
It's not really possible for most materials to be exactly perfectly black.
01:13
We'll bring the value down
01:15
to 0.002
01:19
and now it's nearly black
01:21
click. OK, to close that color selector.
01:24
And let's change the specular roughness
01:27
that's going to determine the glossiness of the surface
01:30
with a roughness of one. The specular highlights are going to be very scattered.
01:34
Let's reduce that roughness. We can bring that down, just drag the spinner.
01:38
And when we get down to very low values, we start to see
01:41
reflections that are kind of coherent.
01:44
Let's set the roughness to a value of 0.4.
01:48
And that corresponds to plastic.
01:50
The other very important property of the standard
01:52
surface is the IOR or index of a fraction
01:56
that's going to determine the reflectivity of the
01:58
surface at different angles to the camera.
02:02
And that'll be easier to see if we go over to our perspective. View,
02:05
click in that view
02:07
and then we can orbit or tumble around in the view
02:10
with the alt and middle mouse button,
02:13
maybe select an object and then orbit around that object.
02:16
We can also
02:17
zoom in or dolly in with control alt and middle mouse
02:20
get in real close. So we can kind of see
02:23
the backlit top
02:25
of that plastic surface.
02:27
And with that framing, it'll be a little bit easier for us to see how Ior works
02:32
as we increase the IOR or index of refraction
02:36
will get greater reflectivity
02:38
on the surfaces, whether they're facing the camera or not.
02:42
If we reduce the IOR,
02:44
we tend to get the result of services facing towards
02:48
the camera will not be as reflective or shiny.
02:51
And services that are pointed away from the
02:53
camera are still going to be more reflective.
02:56
So
02:56
let's set the index of refraction to 1.3.
03:01
All right. So now we've got our first standard surface,
03:04
I should mention as an aside that
03:06
we can use the three Ds max physical material in this workflow.
03:11
But I prefer to use the Arnold Standard surface
03:14
because it supports more features such as the round
03:17
corners map we're going to be using later.
Video transcript
00:03
All right, we'll close the environment and effects dialogue
00:06
and go back to the slate material editor which I've got minimized down here.
00:10
I can restore that.
00:12
And now we want to create our first proper material
00:15
going to be a black plastic.
00:17
We can just take the existing standard surface and duplicate it.
00:20
Hold down the shift key and drag to make a duplicate.
00:24
And with that duplicate selected,
00:25
rename it
00:26
plastic black.
00:28
Now let's assign it to the chassis of our ham radio.
00:32
We can actually select objects directly in the Arnold render view.
00:36
And just to show that if I hover my mouse over that chassis and then click,
00:40
we'll see that that object was selected in the view ports
00:44
and we can see its modified panel parameters.
00:47
Then we can go over to our standard surface.
00:49
With that node selected, we can go up to the material editor toolbar
00:53
and click the button to assign the material to the selection
00:57
and then make some changes.
00:58
Go over to the base color. Click on the color swatch
01:02
and reduce the value.
01:04
Bring that down.
01:05
We want this to be black
01:07
but not perfectly black.
01:09
It's not really possible for most materials to be exactly perfectly black.
01:13
We'll bring the value down
01:15
to 0.002
01:19
and now it's nearly black
01:21
click. OK, to close that color selector.
01:24
And let's change the specular roughness
01:27
that's going to determine the glossiness of the surface
01:30
with a roughness of one. The specular highlights are going to be very scattered.
01:34
Let's reduce that roughness. We can bring that down, just drag the spinner.
01:38
And when we get down to very low values, we start to see
01:41
reflections that are kind of coherent.
01:44
Let's set the roughness to a value of 0.4.
01:48
And that corresponds to plastic.
01:50
The other very important property of the standard
01:52
surface is the IOR or index of a fraction
01:56
that's going to determine the reflectivity of the
01:58
surface at different angles to the camera.
02:02
And that'll be easier to see if we go over to our perspective. View,
02:05
click in that view
02:07
and then we can orbit or tumble around in the view
02:10
with the alt and middle mouse button,
02:13
maybe select an object and then orbit around that object.
02:16
We can also
02:17
zoom in or dolly in with control alt and middle mouse
02:20
get in real close. So we can kind of see
02:23
the backlit top
02:25
of that plastic surface.
02:27
And with that framing, it'll be a little bit easier for us to see how Ior works
02:32
as we increase the IOR or index of refraction
02:36
will get greater reflectivity
02:38
on the surfaces, whether they're facing the camera or not.
02:42
If we reduce the IOR,
02:44
we tend to get the result of services facing towards
02:48
the camera will not be as reflective or shiny.
02:51
And services that are pointed away from the
02:53
camera are still going to be more reflective.
02:56
So
02:56
let's set the index of refraction to 1.3.
03:01
All right. So now we've got our first standard surface,
03:04
I should mention as an aside that
03:06
we can use the three Ds max physical material in this workflow.
03:11
But I prefer to use the Arnold Standard surface
03:14
because it supports more features such as the round
03:17
corners map we're going to be using later.
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