(Solved) Glossy sofa material

bitinn

I had a hard time trying to create a material similar to the silk / leather on this sofa using metallic-roughness workflow:

- The metallic value should be 0 right?
- I think the average roughness is around 0.4-0.5?
- I am not sure how much influence light has in this case?
- I am not going for a 100% realistic / physically accurate result, what can I do to recreate its "dark to bright" transition around armrest? (besides trying to reverse engineering the environment lighting...)

EDIT: My attempt on this (obviously quite bad and my model's UV isn't setup to do the smooth armrest; but I want to figure out the glossy feel first):

Spwee

The lighting is really playing a strong role in this. I think the key here is getting a studio lighting rig, and then playing with the mat settings.
 
It looks like there is quite a bit of diffusion on the original mat. Play around with the albedo as well. 

EDIT: The reference image has quite a more defined surface, I would try to make a very smooth rounded cylinder to make the mats on.  

ZacD

I'm pretty sure the fabric is at least semi-metallic, but it could also just be an anisotropic material (or both). Paint and fabrics can be semi-metallic, it's often used to make plastic things look metallic, especially common for cheap bathroom fixtures. The reason I suggest it's probably anisotropic is that the light is being blurred along the directions of the fabric, you'll need a shader that supports anisotropic shading to get great results. There is a cheap trick that can work for brushed metal, where you add noise and blur it in the direction you want anisotropic shading, and add that to the normal map, but the effect can go away when the texture mips, or look too chunky. Normally it's good enough if you just want it to look good at a particular distance. 

bitinn

@ZacD @Spwee

Thx for your suggestion. I am now using a combination of metallic 0.8 + roughness 0.7; these values feel wrong to me intuitively but somehow I think it looks better in engine:


 

Eric Chadwick

Silk and satin are very reflective, with high roughness, and strong anisotropy.

They're also highly dependent on your environment & lighting, as are any other reflective surfaces. Without good lighting, black cards, etc., it won't look as good as your reference. Do some research into product photography to get a sense of how to set these things up.

bitinn

@Eric Chadwick

Thx for the tip, I went back and setup a better studio lighting environment, and compare it with a silky material I got on substance source.

(The reference red silk has average metallic value around 0.5 and roughness of 0.65; my was 0.6 for metallic and 0.55 for roughness; after adjusting value closer to reference, I think I got something better)

reference



previous guess (looks more like glossy leather than silk)



after adjustment






Without anisotropic specular support, I think this is about as close as I can get.

And I don't think one should author anisotropic feature per material? It should be done with specific models or using in-game shader?

almighty_gir

you can author anisotropy per material if you want. and that's exactly how microfiber surfaces work.

Spwee

I don't think you need to make an anisotropy matt ( i might be very wrong ) 




Here is a mesh in Modo, i'm achieving very similar highlights using a studio lighting rig, and just playing metal and roughness settings.

Eric Chadwick  said is good. You need studio lighting to achieve those sweet highlights from your original image.

It could be, that you might not be able to achieve those results from the ref image without being in a studio lighting environment. No idea on that one though.