How to create basic metallic textures

Metals are a most interesting and varied family. The variety found among metals is very wide indeed.

This beginner level tutorial discussing how to create four basic metal textures: base metal, gold, copper and lead.

Metals are shiny, in quite a different way than plastics or glass. While several plastics and glass have well defined specular highlights, metals often have softer highlights (metallic lustre). Another difference is that metals tinge their reflections with the color of the metals, while most other materials do not impart any cast to their reflections.

We will start by creating a basic metal texture. We will then modify it by copying to get different metal textures.

A basic metal texture

Let’s begin by creating a new model, and a basic metallic texture.

1. Open Strata 3D SE
2. Create a new Project, using the “Tile platform” preset.
3. Draw a rounded cube.
4. Create a new texture and name it Base Metal.
5. Set the glossiness to 100%.
6. In the Smoothness drop-down menu, select Brass. This controls the softness of the specular highlights —the luster.

Voilá! That is our first metallic texture.

It is a good idea to use spheres instead of cubes in the texture preview window to see how the texture is coming along. It’s also a good idea to to a bit of trial and error with the settings, doing test renders and correcting anything that doesn’t look right.

Let us now create a few different metal textures.

Gold

Gold is yellow, with yellowish reflections.

1. Create a new Image texture and copy it from Base Metal.
2. Name it Gold.
3. Apply a dark yellow/ochre to the Diffuse Color.
4. Apply a pale yellow to the Specular Color.

Do a couple of test renders and adjust the colors to your taste.

I prefer to use slightly orangish yellows to avoid the risk of greenish golds.

Copper

Copper is very similar to gold, the only difference being the use of orange diffuse and specular colors.

You may want to reduce the specularity or reflectivity of copper, depending on the intended use. This is a very polished copper.

Lead

Lead is darker and duller, so we need other changes here.

• Diffuse and Ambient amounts are taken down to 50%.
• The specular amount is now 75%.
• Reflectivity is now 5%.

This yields a usable lead, apart from the fact that lead is so soft, it is very seldom unscratched in real life.

Wrap up

This is —of course— the barest introduction to creating metallic textures. It will hopefully give you a basic understanding of creating these textures; and four usable metal textures.

There is much more to learn: aging metals, creating surface textures, etc., etc.