Create Realistic Materials with Cycles

In this tutorial you will discover how to create:

A rusted material
Worn wood with foot prints
Dirty glass
Alpha masked trees
Lens flare

(scroll down for the material node setups)

Cycles has been around for a while now, and while shiny perfect floors are fun, it’s important to challenge yourself with more ‘interesting’ materials from time to time.

You won’t find any modelling or lighting in this tutorial, just materials. So you can either start with your own scene, or download the starter scene below.

Final Result

Discover how to create these materials

Download the Starter File

Node Setups

To save time, here’s the complete material node setup screenshots…

Rusted Material

Rust0086 (tiled)
Rust0141 (tiled)
RustMixed0007

Complete node setup for Rusted Metal in Cycles

Node setup for the rusted metal material

Wooden Floor Material

WoodPlanksDirty0031 (tiled)
Foot Print Brush

Node setup for a wooden floor material

Dirty Glass

PlasterWhiteWorn0126 (tiled)
Grungemaps0107 (Image 1)

Node setup for a dirty glass material

Alpha Masked Trees

IMG_8880

Node setup for alpha masked material in Cycles

Wooden Post

WoodPlanksPainted0048

The most difficult material I've ever made

Compositing Setup

Skies0251 (Image 1)

I hope you enjoyed this tutorial! Now go forth and create some realistic cycles materials

Create something cool? Post it in the comments below!

About Andrew Price

User of Blender for 9+ years. I've written tutorials for 3d World Magazine and spoken at three Blender conferences. My goal is to help artists get employed in the industry by making training accessible and easy to understand. I'm an Aussie and I live in South Korea ;)

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Gallifuoco

my first 3d model thanks…
AndresMedinaVanegas

Ok, i just go through the tutorial, but I’m getting the boots and the floor (not the planks) in a purple color…..I don’t know why. Everything looks great but the boots and the floor.
AndresMedinaVanegas

Ok, i just go through the tutorial, but I’m getting the boots and the floor (not the planks) in a purple color…..I don’t know why. Everything looks great but the boots and the floor.
AndresMedinaVanegas

Ok, i just go through the tutorial, but I’m getting the boots and the floor (not the planks) in a purple color…..I don’t know why. Everything looks great but the boots and the floor.
zak

Andrew, I think that making your own texture repository for us to use would be equally useful to us as tutorials. The hardest thing in making any scene, way harder than modelling or finding the inspiration, is getting hold of proper textures. Thanks
Jesus Pereira

Hi, love your tutorials. Youe are an inspiration to me wanting to become a really great artist. Love the inspiration section of your site. Question, how do you get the tiled textures? Do you create them in GIMP or Photshop? do you get them from a free resource? Which is it? Oh yeah, please keep coming with the awesome tutorials and CGI work!

Jesus Pereira

Disregard I didn’t watch before I asked.

aj

fantastic tutorial and extremely helpfull!!
– not sure if anyone has mentioned this but why is it when i add a plane above the lantern ( after i finished the tutorial ) and put an emission to it that the light acts completly different. Am i dong something wrong with it or do i need to change specific setting in the nodes?!?! thanks if anyone anwsers

Lisandro Crespo

You shouldn’t use the emission plane at the final render. The plane is helpful to light the objects as previews.
This will help you: http://www.blenderguru.com/videos/introduction-to-cycles/ .
Good luck!

Lars Madsen

Another great tutorial. It really shows how attention to little details add up to a lot of realism in the final render – great job.

Now – I have a question a little bit out of context maybe. Does anyone know if there is a shortcut to automatically connect a node output. I think I have seen Andrew do that a couple of times and at about 49:34 in this tutorial it seems that the output of the glare node automatically connects …. or maybe he just moves the mouse so quickly that I miss it

Thanks!

Lars Madsen

Ah – got it!

Ctrl. + Shift + left click automatically adds a viewer note in the compositor – nice

http://www.facebook.com/enri.voltan Enrico Voltan

Hi, I tried to texture (with cycles) a scene from my self but i had a problem with UV maps.

When i click Unwrap it appears the message:
“Object scale is not 1.0. Unwrap will operate on a non-scaled version of the mesh.”
The problem i found is that i can’t adjust the size of my texture on the model and that normal maps don’t work.
how can i adjust the size??
thanks

Julian_eisel

you need to apply the scale (in object mode – press Ctrl+A and select Scale

Dany

Thank you for the tutorial, it was very nice, as all your tuts are.

I’ve got something like this: http://imageshack.us/a/img823/6668/finishedrenderdany.png
Trent

Great Tutorial. I have used what I learned from this one and applied it to a new project. But when I render the model, all of the parts appear black. But when I leave the render port open, the texture is visible. Also, if I change the color of a texture using a ColorRamp, the color isn’t visible in the render port. What am I doing wrong? Am I missing something? A node, a certain setting? Please help.
Mike

Hands down the best Cycles node based material tutorial there is right now. Thanks for this. I finally understand some of the nodes I was having trouble with.
BlenderCyclesRender

Hello AP Thanx a lot for great tuts!!!

I want to ask you one thing, Could you make a tutorial on SSS effect in Cycles, cs right now im using SSS imitation with creating the actual “bone” structure within the skin, its really good when im making wax material, something like Candle, but when it comes to Human body it takes too long time doing the same thing, so if you are aware of some other method pls make a TUT on it.

Create Realistic Materials with Cycles

Final Result