The RIGHT Way to do Edge Wear (in Cycles!)

[@Jay-wr1wh]

Just FYI everybody. His Space Opera textures are awesome. Worth every penny. He also has probably the best texturing tutorial for sci-fi.

[@ChristopherFraserVFX]

Yeah, listen to Jay! I'm glad to hear you love it 😁

[@ASADKHAN-ng1js]

dont get me wrong but it is not as good as you would thing, impossible to find what you looking for.

[@Jay-wr1wh]

@@ASADKHAN-ng1js You wont find a more comprehensive texture back designed specifically for sci-fi ships.

[@JRHainsworth]

If you multiply the whole thing by an ambient occlusion node, it prevents edge wear in the crevices and leaves the edge wear on the outer edges only.

[@ChristopherFraserVFX]

That's one method! I like it

[@justanothernobody7142]

What do you mean when you say "multiply the whole thing by an ambient occlusion node" isn't that what he's already doing in the video, the last node before the shader is a multiply node with AO.

[@totheknee]

@@justanothernobody7142 - But look at the video right when he plugs in the AO node. The inner edges still have the wear effect on them. You need to tweak the AO node and the graph to get the effect that the OP was talking about.

[@oil3372]

Maybe I am doing something wrong but I can't see anything on the edges of it

[@artecno882]

TRY WITH YOUR ILUMINATION, HAPPENS TO ME ....AND....COLOR MANAGMENT MAYBE HELP

[@ChristopherFraserVFX]

Make sure you're in cycles and render view!

[@tobie31325]

it doenst seem to work, when I put the mix node on difference it just turns black

[@JA-bl2el]

Me too. Super disappointing.

[@WanderwegGames]

@@JA-bl2el I switched from EEVEE to Cycles rendering, that did the trick

[@Autaka-Nubia]

i'm so grateful to my friend because he sent your channel to me, i''m so bad in materials and textures, great job

[@CalgaryCalamari]

Loved the tutorial thank you! One request: Would REALLY be helpful if you could put a key stroke display on screen so us noobs know what you're doing when you use one. :D :D

[@omermagen824]

If you use vector math set to dot product it calculates a more accurate difference and the edge will be even. Another method is to use an ambient occlusion node set to inside and with a small distance value. Again an image texture can be plugged into the distance to make rough edge wear. Bevel and Ambient occlusion make different results so you can mix and match them to get something that looks awesome! If your model is organic with dense topology you could also use the Geometry- Pointiness node.

[@ChristopherFraserVFX]

All other excellent solutions! Can't remember if I covered this in the video but I also like to use pointiness for slight color variations too. I like the ao method too if you want corners to get way more worn, it can work really well! I forgot about that technique.

[@DanielGrovePhoto]

Nice job man! Love the simplicity, control, and tweakability! My favorite kinds of setups.

[@shakhbozkhudoyberdiev3661]

honestly the best soft tutorial ive ever seen. short and straight to the point ! i love it

[@ChristopherFraserVFX]

Thanks! No reason to add fluff, right?

[@caiooca5793]

@@ChristopherFraserVFX RIGHT!

[@plasmaticpulse6301]

WOW, now thats an edge wear tutorial. Very nice and I love the examples you showed

[@DanielOakfield]

This is awesome, I achieved a similar effects with some convolute nodes setup using the bevel, thank you for sharing!!!! Subbed

[@batman3698]

Use geometry nodes normal output instead of a 0 radius bevel and use a vector math dot product node instead of mix RGB

[@sebo102]

How do I use the geo node normal output in shader editor?

[@Riley_Christian]

This is the way 🙌 Thanks so much for sharing!

[@rotajulien140]

clever answer to share with the blender's fandom. That's the moto!!!

[@minotaursgamezone]

hi... when i change to difference at around 0:50 the whole thing goes black.

[@ChristopherFraserVFX]

Make sure you're in cycles AND rendered view

[@minotaursgamezone]

@@ChristopherFraserVFX oh. Whoops. Will give it another go!

[@darkscorpion6534]

Trying to follow along but It's not working. What did you plug the Mix Color into at 0:44 Seconds. Im sure it should be pretty obvious but Im pretty damn new to Blender...

[@ChristopherFraserVFX]

There's a neat addon that comes with Blender called node wrangler! You can enable it under Edit > Preferences > Addons. One of the cool things it lets you do is Ctrl+Shift Click nodes to instantly plug them into the material output so you can preview them. Or, you can just plug the node directly into the output.

[@darkscorpion6534]

@@ChristopherFraserVFX I actually sort of got it to work. I was using an incorrect node for one part lol.

[@darkscorpion6534]

@@ChristopherFraserVFX I'll enable that!

[@Benn25]

This is a very good method, but still has one drawback : the wear is in both positive angles edges (edges out from the body) AND negative (holes). may be what you are after, but if you want to select ONLY the positive edges angles, you will need to set this as attribute in geometry node (signed edges angle is what you are looking for), and grab that back into the shader editor. Now, the only "problem" is that you will need both the material AND the geometry node modifier to "sniff" the edges. by doing so, you can separate negative and positive angles to do different things, for example dirt in negative edges, and edges wear in the positive ones. twice as very powerful!

[@sanimatorbruhspammer]

It comes out beautiful! Thank you for your fantastic method.

[@georgeluna6217]

Great one thank you! What about if you want to displace to 2 materials from each other? Sort of to create a sense of layer of paint between those 2?

[@Noodleydoo]

My mix node doesn't allow me to mark it as difference

[@le_fancy_squid]

Great tutorial, thanks! One little problem is that at the end, around 3:50, you show that the objects will dynamically work with each other and mine don't. In order to get that effect I have to join the objects together which I'd prefer not to. Did I do something wrong?

[@ChristopherFraserVFX]

Uncheck "Only Local" on your ambient occlusion node

[@Afran3D]

I went into this video thinking it would be about the pointiness attribute instead I learnt something new entirely. Awesome stuff man!

[@ChristopherFraserVFX]

I'm so glad you liked it! I'd love to know why it looked pointless to you, maybe I can fix that so other potential viewers don't miss out.

[@Afran3D]

@@ChristopherFraserVFX Oh no you misread me my dude! There's a shader node called 'geometry' and it has an output called 'pointiness' that highlights sharp edges like what you got here - albeit with much less control. This definitely wasn't a pointless tutorial by any stretch of the matter for sure!

[@ChristopherFraserVFX]

Oh my bad! I guess I flew through it too quickly. Pointiness is a sweet attribute though, I like to use it as a sneaky way to add some brightness variation to some of my sci-fi materials.

[@DuberlyMazuelosBZero]

why this tutorial never work for me :( ???

[@shizzlemcsheezy2151]

Thank you for this, works perfectly for what I'm doing, was able to use some procedural noise instead of an image texture...and dont forget to send it to a bump node too so the wear is more defined..

[@RazzBurryPremium]

Its not working for me, the Mix Color(difference) node (FAC=1) is just showing black in viewer Edit= Solved, the bevel nodes only show in rendered view

[@pb9764]

Thank you very much! Your comment helped me a lot

[@jacknight3690]

That is some nice tutorial, nice job man

[@GlebAlexandrov]

Thanks, it is a very useful and straightforward method indeed!

[@ChristopherFraserVFX]

Thank you, I'm glad to hear that! And of course, love your content

[@orionchip]

How did you preview it? I am lost at that point

[@ChristopherFraserVFX]

Enable the built-in node wrangler addon in your preferences, then control+shift+left click the node

[@orionchip]

Thanks .

[@m0nt3s47]

0:44 how u can connect it like that?

[@ChristopherFraserVFX]

Ctrl + Shift + Left click. Make sure you have the node wrangler addon enabled, it comes with Blender

[@henryheavy8044]

Is there a way to change the edge wear color ? I kinda wanted it to be light grey or just normal grey

[@Mr_Mijagi]

Hi, thanks for the tutorial. Nice method. I have a problem though. My imperfections appear stretched in the z axis (I took one from Quixel Bridge). Can't really figure a way out to fix that. Any tips?

[@ChristopherFraserVFX]

Your mapping is probably betraying you here. Try setting the projection of the textures from "Flat" to "Box". If that doesn't work, add a Texture Coordinate node and plug the Object output into the Vector input on your Image Texture node. Lemme know if that works :)

[@Mr_Mijagi]

@@ChristopherFraserVFX Thanks for the quick response. I will try that out!

[@Mr_Mijagi]

@@ChristopherFraserVFX That worked like charme! Thanks!

[@stevenlitvintchouk3131]

Super tutorial! I assume you have to reset the scale of the object to 1 in all dimensions before applying this edge wear? That's the usual first step for these kinds of effects.

[@ChristopherFraserVFX]

Not necessary! I'm pretty sure it works off relative world scale, so it'd be the same thickness on an object that's at .00001 scale as an object that's 1 scale, if they're the same size. Hope that makes sense

[@mind_of_a_darkhorse]

Great video that simulates the edge wear effect!

[@ChristopherFraserVFX]

Thank you very much!

[@medopizza9]

how would I bake this texture to a image? I've tryed clicking the bake button but the edge wouldn't appear in the image.

[@pinpingoin]

I wish you did show what shortcut you used in this tutorial. I have no idea what you did at 0:44 to link the Mix shader into ??? because we also don't see the last node...

[@ChristopherFraserVFX]

Oh that's just node wrangler. It's an addon that comes with Blender, make sure to enable it. Ctrl+Shift click any node to send it straight to the material output. It's a great way to preview what's going on in your project.

[@pinpingoin]

@@ChristopherFraserVFX Tyty!! Lovely tutorial!

[@rockleesmile]

Tried this on a Monkey head at default scale in Cycles in viewport shading on 3.6 and it just doesn't do anything? The bevel nodes don't seem to actually matter no matter what in the chain I adjust I get a solid color or at best a white blob that doesn't have anything to do with the edges. I'm very confused because I actually understand how these nodes work together (came to this tutorial for a refresher) and it SHOULD be doing something, but just isn't... EDIT: I plugged the a texture coordinate and mapping node into the bevel nodes and put them to through the normal vector and that seems to have done it. Weird that it didn't need that in the video, but I should have tried that immediately before screwing around with other stuff! Anyway, that seemed to be the issue.

[@ChristopherFraserVFX]

Very very strange, that definitely should not be necessary but if that's what you needed to do to get it to work..

[@sahanmadushanka4331]

i can't see anything when put difference onto MIXRGB//// the object is showing as black color... please help me to fix this

[@sahanmadushanka4331]

I finally found the resone . it works under the cycles

[@joe_fabricator]

Really nice tutorial, thank you very much.

[@darrenberkey7017]

I had a smaller object (a hex wrench) and my results were not quite as good, but it still got the effect I was looking for. Thanks!

[@adrianrock4610]

sublime, concreto y efectivo ... gracias bro

[@shalopai1932]

What you did on 0:46 ? How i can change the view like this

[@ChristopherFraserVFX]

Ctrl+shift click with node wrangler enabled. Or you can always just plug the node into the material output.

[@acidandbile6335]

How could I use this method while having an image texture connected to the Base Colour in the Principle BSDF?

[@RoddFlanders]

Just use a mixer, set one colour to your image, and the other to the colour you were using as your base.

[@DylanWilliams-pb6qj]

is there a way to do this in Eevee?

[@ChristopherFraserVFX]

Unfortunately not really, but you could always bake out your textures to use them in other render engines!

[@vahida6146]

Hello, Thanks for the tutorial, I would like to ask how to export the material as a scratch texture map outside of the blender to use in another program?

[@ChristopherFraserVFX]

Look into texture baking! Basically, you'll UV unwrap your model, and then there's a feature that will let you render your texture onto that UV map. There are a lot of good tutorials out there! Any one will probably do just fine :)

[@matchdance]

Easily one of the best tutorial! Instant sub!

[@ChristopherFraserVFX]

Thanks for the kind words and the sub!

[@sezerturan4371]

Thanks so much Christopher for this dope tutorial! can't find better than this one! i'm following the channel right now :))) keep the good work!

[@vuli6274]

hey is there a way to make the edge wear emmisive? i can't seem to find a way to do that since everything becomes emmisive and i want ONLY the edges to glow 😥

[@ChristopherFraserVFX]

You can use the edge wear like I show you in the tutorial, then plug it into the emission strength or use it to drive the emissive color. There are a lot of ways to accomplish what you're after, but the simplest way is to just plug things in where you think they should go. For this kind of effect, that's usually the best solution. If you're doing that and everything is glowing, make sure you're using the Cycles engine. Like the title says, this effect is Cycles only.

[@mikerusby]

looks good, will try this on my car model :)

[@Just-Vynieek]

what ever i do the bevel node doesnt work. going to other versions trying other settings nothing whatched many tutorials but what ever i do the bevel node dosent do what its supposed to

[@alecdorfman4871]

Play with the values

[@aldopaints670]

This tutorial is so easy to follow it should be illegal. Thanks a lot!

[@ChristopherFraserVFX]

Happy to help!

[@Youshisu]

How to copy nodes? my blender sometimes copy old selection :(

[@timoschofer2035]

the only downside is, that with bevel it treats cavity the same like an edge (i would expect some there there in the cavities instead worn of color). Is there some possibility to fix that? otherwise it looks good.

[@ChristopherFraserVFX]

I've come to realize that! I see a lot of people talk about multiplying an Ambient Occlusion node on top. That'd be a pretty easy solution I think

[@adrianzambrana5090]

Mi texture image doesn't have the "alpha - straight " enabled, could you explain me why please??

[@hugobeyer]

Use distant node instead of difference and you will get a constant edge

[@bizentino]

How can I mix this with a musgrave texture?

[@ChristopherFraserVFX]

I would add your musgrave texture, plug it into a map range node, then use that as the bevel radius! You can adjust the values in the map range node to adjust the minimum and maximum radius of the edgewear

[@jonathanneely4291]

When mixing the two bevel nodes the exact way you do and then node wrangler previewing from the mix node, my engine crashes every time :(

[@ChristopherFraserVFX]

Does it help if you use the Normal output from the Geometry node instead of a second bevel set to 0? (This is faster anyway if it works, I just didn't think of it at the time of the tutorial)

[@HDreamzCG]

1st. time here. I just watch it and just subscribe and like vid TY for shering this

[@coddy212thcommanderorang8]

thanks for this one but I have been having a problem and that is that I cant control the color I want nor can I color the inner edges I hope there is a solution for the problem

[@carloso5599]

Thank you. Youre the best!

[@RandMpinkFilms]

So simply explained. Genius tip! Thank you!!

[@kartal2339]

Thanks for video.. Can i export this as a texture?

[@ChristopherFraserVFX]

Yep. Look into "texture baking."

[@LucasFarchetto]

excellent tutorial!! thank you so much

[@bt_martin]

Great, informative video! Is there an equivalent solution to use with EEVEE?

[@ChristopherFraserVFX]

I don't know of any good methods for eevee... You could maybe use an ambient occlusion node set to "inside"?

[@ShellShocked78-g3x]

can you update this for 4.2.3? i tried it today to update one of my robots visuals and it doesn't work anymore ;w;

[@ChristopherFraserVFX]

Are you using cycles?

[@SZMIDEL]

Noooice! Thanks for that

[@marty01018]

very good tutorial, thank you so much for your help and advices

[@rossterry3002]

at 0:54 I've had to use "exclusion" instead of difference. Using difference just makes it all black.

[@Achelon]

I've seen several edge wear tutorials on youtube but none of them have worked at all when I've made them in blender... Any ideas? - oh it only works in cycles :D

[@ChristopherFraserVFX]

Yep haha! You could always bake your textures if you need to use eevee 😄

[@blackvertigoion36]

Does this only work in cycles?

[@ChristopherFraserVFX]

Yes, eevee can't render these kinds of effects properly, so the bevel node is only supported in cycles

[@nylreia]

Why when i duplicate an object (like you did at the end) I don't get any interaction at the two item connections contrary to what you show in the video?

[@ChristopherFraserVFX]

Ah, i forget to explain sometimes! That's ctrl+shift D. I think it's a feature of the node wrangler addon that comes with Blender.

[@j0t4r05]

can you export that as a image or turn it into one to use in game engines

[@ChristopherFraserVFX]

Yes! That process is called baking. There are tons of cool tutorials on how to do it in Blender, I just don't have one yet.

[@j0t4r05]

@@ChristopherFraserVFX thanks alot ill look into it

[@Blenderbarn]

Finally my edging skills need an upgrade!

[@youtubeplusofficial]

soft. THANKS TO THE THE TEACHER.

[@ChristopherFraserVFX]

YOU ARE WELCOME ALWAYS

[@MicrowaveNoodles]

mine is just a blank texture please help

[@vince2696]

does this only work for high poly meshes? I have a low poly model that im working with and its all ending up as black or white

[@ChristopherFraserVFX]

That's probably either because of the size of your mesh/bevel, or because you're not using Cycles.

[@robo1540]

it just doesnt work for me, it just doesnt, at around 0:50 you already got outlines but for me its just pitch black and if i lower the factor it becomes just normal colors i dont even know what to do, this is the 2nd tutorial i follow through on the bevel node and neither of them worked

[@ChristopherFraserVFX]

Are you using Cycles?

[@patnor7354]

Selected Viewport Shading?

[@danielkolesar8353]

Same problem, doesnt work

[@ahaucanjv]

you are the best!

[@amghar7creations222]

this method doesn't work on blender 4.2

[@ChristopherFraserVFX]

Are you using Cycles?

[@MakeiA]

Thank you for explaining

[@Fleischkopf]

my blender alway freezes when i use the bevel and ao node 😳

[@sa10thecreator]

Awesome, thanks!!!!

[@coffeediction]

great stuff an not 20 minutes long 👍 what else would one need

[@XpressStudiosforyou]

How to download that model??

[@ChristopherFraserVFX]

It's just some parts from some of Digital Shipyard's Kitbash packs! They're incredible. You can get one of them right here (discounted at only $6.50 as of writing this comment): artstn.co/m/RxAnk

[@tonin8499]

Nice video! It would be even better though if you could adjust the amount of scratches depending on the angle of the edge. Since certain edges (the ones that push in instead of out) are not likely to be scratched by anything.

[@ChristopherFraserVFX]

Ooh that's an interesting point... That would be hard since the bevel node doesn't really see that I don't think. I'd love to see a solution for this though

[@EmilySmirleGURPS]

@@ChristopherFraserVFX You can make the mask for that in Geometry Nodes. The geonodes can look at the edge angle including the sign, output it to a colour Attribute, and then you can load that colour Attribute in the shader and proceed as normal. This works in Eevee as well as Cycles, and any other render engine that can access attributes.

[@ChristopherFraserVFX]

That is incredibly clever, I'll try this out

[@JRHainsworth]

You can. Multiply what goes into the bevel node by pointiness from the geometry node. You may need to use map range to tweak the pointiness.

[@mariuswickli3206]

you can use an ambient occlusion node and subtract this from the edge wear. I think you will have to use the multiply mode for that but i'm not sure right now.

[@RichellyItalo]

Great! Thank you.

[@TankzUploadz]

There is no seperate hsv node in blender

[@ChristopherFraserVFX]

They changed it in a recent update! Use the separate color node, you can set that to hsv

[@MaxBidnychenko]

Thank you for the video! I am beginning to learn Blender to make *fancy* renders of my fusion360 models and this is just what I was looking for! But it seems that I can only see this effect on cycles but not eevee. Did I miss some checkbox on eevee settings?

[@neilwilson2747]

best work around is a new image txt set to black and texture paint in white where you want the effect.

[@ChristopherFraserVFX]

Sadly the bevel node doesn't work in Eevee, so you'll have to find a workaround... you could try using an ambient occlusion node set to "Inside" to get a sinilat effect, but i dont think that works in eevee either sadly

[@cg_lexus]

Thank you!

[@VisualistAyush07]

Thank you for this awesome video

[@ChristopherFraserVFX]

My pleasure!

[@simoneiorio9703]

Precious tips.

[@ChristopherFraserVFX]

Thank you 😄 That's what I'm all about!

[@MYTHICALLY3D]

Imma do it 😅

[@nataliegavrilova8104]

After applying bevel - mix - difference, the object is completely black, no edges. Why? Time: 0:50

[@guismo111]

you need to be in cycles for the bevel node to works

[@xnnocence]

0:43 it would ve been great if you showed where that gets plugged in..

[@ChristopherFraserVFX]

The material output to preview!

[@xnnocence]

@@ChristopherFraserVFX yeah, i eventually thought i had to do that but there was still no results :C the mesh just stayed blank as if theres no textures applied. Yes i was in render mode

[@tarkbilgili929]

great tutorial

[@ChristopherFraserVFX]

Thanks!

[@Skl_One]

well done.Thanks!

[@cg.man_aka_kevin]

Really great tips! 👌👌👌 Btw, do you have discord?

[@ChristopherFraserVFX]

Glad to hear! As for messaging, you can message me on my Instagram if you need something:)

[@cg.man_aka_kevin]

@@ChristopherFraserVFX Okay.

[@jeffreyspinner9720]

I'm more amazed that your LUFS and TP are perfect... (A type of loudness that ytube uses...) I'm combining what I learned from you and 3 other guys to make my own custom shader node... for my own educational purpose... if I sold anything my ex-wife would pop up out of nowhere and try to take some... marriage my not be till death do you part, _but divorce is!_

[@foreign_objective2855]

Is there an EEVEE solution for this?

[@ChristopherFraserVFX]

Unfortunately just baking and hand-painting, this kind of effect can't be done accurately with a realtime raster engine like eevee

[@SnowInHere]

doesn't work on flat objects with edges

[@ChristopherFraserVFX]

Nope, it only works on corners. Anything that can be beveled!

[@Xenotheenderdragon]

wont work on my models

[@ChristopherFraserVFX]

Make sure you're using Cycles :)

[@Xenotheenderdragon]

@@ChristopherFraserVFX i am i think the model isnt uved right

[@ChristopherFraserVFX]

The beauty of this technique is you don't need to UV unwrap your model, since it's fully procedural. Check all the nodes are plugged in properly, then perhaps the bevel amount is too large (or small), or your normals are flipped? (I don't know if that would fix it but worth trying)