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enter image description hereI have what seems like a simple example here. I wanted to practice texture and lighting by making some simple M&M renders. I used a NOISE texture for the surface to give it some "eggshell" quality in the render, I am progressing nicely. Now I'm stuck...

I created the "M" logo as a PNG with alpha channel. I applied it in the material using the image texture with mapping node and texture coordinates. All basic stuff so far.

I can't for the life of me figure out how to use procedural nodes like Voronoi or Noise to make the stark white of the M Logo look "worn" so some of the color of the M&M show through, like it's scuffed. Now the render isn't convincing because every M is too perfect. I know I could use my image editing software to make some alpha transparencies in the PNG decal, but then they would be the same across all meshes, and I was hoping to use a NOISE node to randomize it a bit.

Can't I use a NOISE tesxture to a COLOR RAMP then make one of the colors ALPHA transparent thus having the M logo "Fade" and let the color show through? I think I've tried 100 different things and I am not getting it. (I am not a Blender expert but have an intermediate understanding of texture node setups...)

Here's a link to my .blend file in my dropbox, without ANY treatment on the M logo. You can see they are too stark white and perfect. I want to scuff just the logo up. Any ideas? Thanks in advance! (Render is formatted for dual monitors so please ignore the odd render dimensions!)

Blend File in Dropbox

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Given that you are using the alpha channel as a mask to control the mix of different elements, you need to make the mask less perfect. Instead of being a perfect white mask, you need to subtract from the white using a texture. Why subtract? Think of white as 1 and Black as 0. You want to affect the mask without adding any more information to the black areas.

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Subtract a texture from the alpha channel, and use the result as a Mask to control the mix for the color for the shader.

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Combining other textures and subtracting them from the alpha you can further distress a texture to seem more random.

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    $\begingroup$ Wow incredible! I'm sad that I spent an hour using "node logic" to try to connect nodes in such a way that I could achieve this effect, and came up with nothing. What you showed here is exactly what I was looking for but I would never have arrived there with my knowledge of nodes. Looks like I just need to keep practicing and learning from people like you. Thanks so much for the time. $\endgroup$
    – Pete Lozzi
    Mar 18, 2018 at 15:23

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