Category: mental ray > Materials
Shader Family: Surface Material
Related Softimage shader: Car Paint
The Car Paint shader simulates the unique characteristics of car paint:
Diffuse reflection in the pigmentation layer producing color shifts at edges due to viewing angle and incident light angle.
Specular highlights from metallic flakes suspended in the pigmentation layer. Including optional ray traced reflections in the metallic flakes.
Clearcoat layer with mirror or glossy reflections and specular highlights with an optional glazing mode.
| Name |
The name of the shader node displayed in the render tree. Enter any name you like, or leave the default. |
| ambient |
The ambient light color component. This parameter is treated differently to the ambient/ambience parameter pair of many other base shaders in that it is influenced by the other diffuse color parameters on this property page. It represents incoming light, rather than the object's ambient color. |
| base_color |
The base diffuse color of the material. |
| edge_color |
Represents the color shift between the base color and the edge color. The color seen at the edges usually appears much darker. For really deep metallic paints as seen on sports cars, the edge color tends to be almost black. |
| edge_color_bias |
Defines the falloff rate of the color towards the edge. The useful range is 0.0 to 10.0, where the value 0.0 turns the effect off. Higher values make the edge region narrower and lower values make it wider. |
| lit_color |
Defines the color seen in the illuminated area of the object's surface. |
| lit_color_bias |
Defines the falloff rate of the color towards the light. The useful range is 0.0 to 10.0, where the value 0.0 turns the effect off. Higher values make the colored region facing the light smaller/narrower, while lower values makes it larger/wider. |
| diffuse_weight |
Modifies the overall level of the diffuse color parameters. |
| diffuse_bias |
Defines the falloff of the diffuse shading. The useful range is 0.5 to 2.0, where 1.0 represents standard Lambertian shading. Higher values push the diffuse peak towards the light source, and lower values flatten the diffuse peak. |
| flake_color |
The color of the reflective flakes, which is generally white. |
| flake_weight |
A multiplier for the above color. |
| flake_reflect |
Defines the amount of ray traced reflection in the flakes, which allows glittery reflections of an HDRI environment, for example. The value of 0.0 turns the effect off. The effect should generally be very subtle and a value of 0.1 is often enough. The final intensity of the reflections also depends on the reflectivity color and the color weight. |
| flake_exp |
Sets the specular exponent for the flakes. |
| flake_density |
Sets the density of the flakes. The useful range is from 0.1 to 10.0, where lower values indicate less dense flakes (more flakes are given low color values near black) and higher values indicates denser flakes. |
| flake_decay |
Since flakes are inherently small, they can easily introduce rendering artifacts if their visual density becomes significantly smaller than a pixel. The flakes furthest from the camera may cause flicker in animation, or trigger unnecessary oversampling and long render times. To avoid this potential problem, set a distance at which the influence of reflective flakes fades out. Positive values reduce the Color Weight so that it reaches 0.0 at Decay Distance. A value of 0.0 disables any decay. |
| flake_strength |
Sets the difference between the orientation of the flakes. The useful range is between 0.0 and 1.0, where 0.0 means that all flakes are parallel to the surface (which disables the effect) and higher values mean that the difference between each flake's orientation becomes larger and more varied. |
| flake_scale |
Sets the size of the flakes. The procedural texture is calculated in object space, and will follow the object. Keep in mind that the scale is therefore influenced by any scale transformation on the object instance. |
| spec |
The color of the primary specular highlight. |
| spec_weight |
Specifies the blend weight for the primary specular color. |
| spec_exp |
Defines the rate at which primary specularity decays outward. |
| spec_sec |
The color of the secondary specular highlight. |
| spec_sec_weight |
Specifies the blend weight for the secondary specular color. |
| spec_sec_exp |
Defines the rate at which secondary specularity decays outward. |
| spec_glazing |
Enables a glazed surface effect by setting a threshold on the primary specular highlight. This option makes the surface appear more polished and shiny. To create the effect of a new sportscar with a highly waxed finish, turn Glazing on. For the look of an old, beat-up car, turn Glazing off. |
| reflection_color |
The color of the reflections in the clearcoat layer of the car paint (generally white). |
| edge_factor |
Defines the narrowness of the reflective edge. |
| reflection_edge_weight |
A multiplier defining the strength of the reflection at surfaces perpendicular to the camera (edges). Clearcoat tends to reflect more at edges than on facing surfaces, this is known as a fresnel effect. |
| reflection_base_weight |
Defines the reflective strength at facing angles. Ggenerally set low, between 0.1 - 0.3. |
| samples |
Sets the number of glossy reflection rays to be traced. The value of 0 disables glossiness. |
| glossy_spread |
Sets the amount of glossiness. Car surfaces are generally almost like mirrors so this value should be kept small. |
| max_distance |
Limits the reach of reflective rays. If the max ray distance is set to 0.0, the reach of the reflection rays is infinite. For values greater than 0.0, the reach of the reflection rays is limited to this distance, and the color of the reflection is faded toward the environment color as the length of the ray approaches this distance. Use Max Ray Distance to improve performance and reduce excessive noise caused by high-contrast objects in the distance. |
| single_env_sample |
When off, an environment sample is made for each reflection ray that misses an object or needs to be mixed with the environment when using the Max Ray Distance option. When on, the environment is sampled only once for these reflection rays. |
| dirt_color |
The color of the dirt. |
| dirt_weight |
The amount of dirt. This parameter would ideally be connected to a texture shader to get variations in the dirt across the surface. If Dirt Weight is set to 0.0 no dirt is added. |
| irradiance_weight |
sets the influence of indirect light (photons and final gathering) on the surface. It is internally divided by PI, i.e. a value of 1.0 means the standard 1.0/PI weight. |
| global_weight |
Modifies the influence of indirect light (photons and final gathering) on the object's surface. It is internally divided by PI. For example, a value of 1.0 means the standard 1.0/PI weight. |
| mode |
The mode selector for the light list. For more information, see Setting the Light List Mode [Direct Illumination]. |
Creates a light list to specifiy which lights should produce the effect. For more information, see Using Light Lists [Direct Illumination].
