Procedural Carbon Fiber Shader - Part 2 (Anisotrophy in Cycles)

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This is the second part of the Carbon Fiber series, where we'll increase the realism of our shader by using the Principled node's Anisotropic option to get a more true-to-life reflection effect for the carbon fiber. This only takes a couple extra steps and the results are totally worth it. This only works in Cycles, so it won't be Eevee compatible.
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[@blengine]

FINAL UPDATE - I re-uploaded this to include a couple extra changes at the end of the video. Carbon fiber is black and non-metallic, so I turned the colors down to black and the metallic value down to 0 and we get a truer-to-life carbon fiber. Thanks again for the feedback on this shader guys! -Chris

[@gottagowork]

You didn't check if the stretching corresponds to the fibers. The "light streak" should be perpendicular to the fibers. The "roughness required" is a known limitation in most current anisotropic implementations. If you want a more polished look, try the Bechman model with roughness 1 and aniso 1. This stretches the light considerably more for strong light sources, but play around with the roughness which can go far above 1. The effect is usually too strong to be used on its own, unless you want to show the mid process of making a brushed workpiece polished. The problem with GGX is that if you lower the roughness, it stops stretching the light. Although for most the different color approach will be enough for Eevee, there is a pseudo aniso custom nodegroup available on the Blender forums that works pretty good for Eevee. But it works better for HDR environments than for actual lamps unfortunately, so it's not 100%. Can't remember if this is for UV tangents or radial as well, I tend to pretty much use UV tangents only. For some fabrics where you don't see the weave, you can mix two aniso together. There are lots of weave patterns to simulate, be sure to set the angles correspondingly, they are often not perpendicular to eachother, but could be i.e. 80/22 or some strangeness. Calculate the angles based on the weave pattern.

[@blengine]

​@@gottagowork The stretching was indeed perpendicular to the fibers when I zoomed in, but you're right this definitely should have been mentioned. And thanks for the other info! I was tempted to look into Eevee solutions more but maybe another time. I'll definitely check the forums for that though once our current project is published and out of mind. I'd really like to tweak these shaders to perfection and release them on blendswap.

[@radoman1234]

It's nice shader. I'm novice in Blender and honestly, I'm not tech guy, node spaghetti are not my favorite. Take look on this video ( and one earlier with more details ), maybe is something like that possible in Cycles. So far I know Unreal also use such stuff to achieve better realism for carbon fiber, car paint, cloth, etc. kzbin.info/www/bejne/o2fXd36Jr82EqbM

[@AlphaXDE]

@@gottagowork how would i go about calculating those angles?

[@gottagowork]

​@@AlphaXDE I rarely bother, I just pick something. But here is a paper going a bit more in detail wrt anisotropic cloth rendering: graphics.ucsd.edu/~henrik/papers/practical_microcylinder_appearance_model_for_cloth_rendering.pdf Note that this is for specular reflections. Doing nap direction for diffuse part is a whole different set of problems and has many problems (at least how I do it).

[@jjc1mowery]

Good Job Chris, love how you explain each node your adding and what they're actually are doing and how they affect each other.

[@RussDnB]

So cool that you picked up on suggestions and followed up the original video. Quality work

[@joelambert7128]

Interweaving metal strands with the carbon is a technique occasionally seen in reality: if you are after a lot of contrast then using the weave mask to feed the metallic input is a potential solution.

[@slushyie]

Amazing CG Master. You have thought me a lot of stuff in these two episodes. THKS SOOOO MUCH :)

[@PlanetXtreme]

Bro, thanks for this video. My car I'm making is going to look awesome!!!! Thanks a bunch!!

[@user-we6bg5gt8x]

Very nice and helpful video!! Thank you for sharing your experience and knowledge with us :P

[@TechnicalJatin1]

Thanks Chris Much Needed Video❤️

[@michaelsmusicinstruments9980]

very nice update

[@HarryCollis97]

0:30 "Stretching reflections in different directions...." So lyrical!

[@gauthierruberti8065]

This is such a good tutorial

[@danielhursan9537]

Wow! This is so cool! Now I model that Koenigsegg CCXR! Thank you! :D

[@MrTreizecinq]

Bravo. Je ne parle pas très bien anglais, mais toutes les informations étaient très claires et parfaitement compréhensibles si on a un minimum de bases avec Blender. Super tuto !!! Merci.

[@videomediaart]

Thank you so much 🙏

[@randallrush4962]

Thank you so much. This is excellent. The Anisotropic rotation was key and made this look spot on. Please, do a tutorial on procedural forged carbon now. That one is messing me up haha

[@blengine]

Forged carbon is pretty sweet looking, I don't think I'll ever make a tutorial on it, but I'll add it to the to-do list in case the mood strikes me, because it does look pretty interesting to make!

[@gergerismail1574]

woow you are best master 💯💥

[@pangtundure]

Super Fuking good Video Man, saved me 5 bucks

[@jokerrabit]

these 2 video's make the first blender tutorial I was able to get through with out finding out my version of blender is incompatible. I'm using the latest 3.0. it's still a bit off but very close and may still need some tweaking. but ty for getting me closer to learning blender. now I need to work more on building more accurate shapes and all that.

[@blengine]

Yeah with Blender's quick dev and frequent(maybe too frequent) UI changes it's making the lifespan of tutorials shorter and shorter. Glad to hear this tutorial worked out for you though =)

[@JZStudiosonline]

A good tip you should mention is that the "linear" sliders in Blender are in fact not linear and makes them difficult to use. A good solution is to take a math node and set it to a power of 2, with the top value being your numerical input. I couldn't tell you why this works, but it makes the sliders much smoother and gives more control over the result while still retaining reasonable values.

[@AdriansNetlis]

The sRGB gamma correction of 2.2 is my guess. So power of 2.2 should give you the most linear results.

[@groznny]

Very cool tutorial.! I think, though, that the value you wanto to change in the Map Range Node is To Max = 0.25

[@VeryStrongBoy]

Absolutely phenomenal, blender seems to find new ways to impress me every day! I am curious however, is there a way to convert this procedural generated texture into a flat 2D style of image and normal map, for use of programs outside of blender?

[@blengine]

I'm sure there is a way, though I can't say what it is off the top of my head. I saw something recently on this but can't remember where, but if you search for "tiling procedural textures" you might be able to find it. There will be a lot of things to consider for a material like this as well, like the anisotropic effect will not be something that you can bake as-is. You may have to create a special normal map for it, or if the program you're exporting to allows for anisotrophy then you can use the black and white zig zag mask to control the anisotropic rotation just like we did in this tutorial. Hard to say without actually doing this all myself, but I hope you can find good info on it!

[@JZStudiosonline]

You should be able to make a square plane and have the output show the normal colors. Take a photo with the camera set to orthographic, and it should work. It's already got bump mapping, you just need to view that output. Shown here, I also have a cleaned up Node Group if you'd like that as well; www.dropbox.com/sh/oo2vo3imyrwv8rf/AACKWCF6RUCdiYywqFrxGeQia?dl=0

[@MilesFinder]

I'm sure you've found the answer by now but for others: either you render out the flat image like JZ Studios suggested or you can lookup texture baking.

[@pauls064]

That HDR is using a pic of a location down the street from my house in Amsterdam :D

[@blengine]

hahah, small world!

[@Wzxxx]

Wow. After 2 parts I have no idea how You could figure it out how to do it. Seems one must be a genius to creata procedural material.

[@blengine]

It comes down to experience with the nodes as well. There are some people that do things that I think are pure black magic, but I feel like I just haven't spent enough time with nodes to know what my options are and how everything mixes together. But also don't let the tutorial fool you, there was a lot of experimenting before I figured out good solutions for things.

[@Wzxxx]

CG Masters thx. It motivates.

[@softrevival5231]

The Final node tree Print Sc PLS!!!!!????

[@user-br6sf7rf4k]

Thank you for tutorial! I cant bake this texture, how to do this correct?

[@blengine]

Ah sorry I don't cover that, but I may have more baking tutorials in the future. Right now the only baking tutorials I have are in my older tutorial on creating a knife, and the baking is limited to normal map baking.

[@user-br6sf7rf4k]

@@blengine Thank you for ansver, now I understanding that the with Metallic in 1, texture baking with black color, if set Metallic to 0, I take correct texture)

[@giobarajas3934]

I'm having an issue, if you could help. I followed your tutorial and it came out 100% perfect. However when I apply it to my designs, the texture does not follow the shape at all. It's so distorted that it no longer looks like carbon fiber at all. The texture doesn't follow the shape like the way it does on your monkey. I've played with the scaling value as well as the position axis and it doesn't make much difference. Thanks!

[@blengine]

For this texture we used UV Coordinates to apply it to the surface. So to fix your issue your object will need to be UV Unwrapped well in order for the carbon fiber texture to appear on it nicely.

[@deepaksp3615]

Did you got the result u want.bez i am stuck in same

[@deepaksp3615]

Can u say how to apply this on modelled object. I tried and didn't got the texture

[@blengine]

Hey, I answered your other comment first, but just in case you don't see that one, here was my reply: I would check the car hood's UV Map, as long as the hood is UV unwrapped well the texture should show up. It could possibly be a scaling issue too. If all else fails you can send the blend file to me at [e-mail] and I'll check it out.

[@deepaksp3615]

@@blengine thanks for reply.sry i did see ur privious reply.i just unwrapped it and was working fine. I am beginner so I don't know this thing sry if my question was stupid 😅 Thanks for the support. Can I mail u if i have doubt with ur tutorial?

[@blengine]

@@deepaksp3615 Glad it worked, and yeah you can email me.

[@deepaksp3615]

@@blengine thankyou

[@coreys2686]

Just found a reason to get a ray-trace capable graphics card. My GTX 1060 just doesn't cut it.

[@joelambert7128]

a GTX 1060 is fine. Just learn to be a bit more patient.

[@JZStudiosonline]

I laugh in 2gb GTX 960. Which renders this just fine...

[@ubern00bkye]

I have a gt 1030 but I'm getting a better card hopefully by next year

[@ABaumstumpf]

The anisotropy-faking also should not be needed - the effect purely comes from the ordered fibres in reality and can be created with the normal-mapping too.