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Is there a way in Cycles to make pearl-like material using material nodes, something like this LEGO brick surface (I am adding more cos it might be hard to see what it is actually)? enter image description here enter image description here enter image description here

You see, it is not metallic but rather like slightly "rainbowish" overtone variations depending on angle one is looking at it (that's my best description of it) with very tiny metallic shine maybe. Literally pearl surface from a shell in different colors, not just white. :-)

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  • $\begingroup$ Check this material out.. (actually the rotations in the Anisotropic BSDF components should be 0-1, not 0-360) But it's a great starting-point. $\endgroup$
    – Robin Betts ♦
    Commented Aug 16, 2023 at 17:07

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Here is a proposition (without the iridescent effect though): Increase a bit the Specular value, decrease a bit the Roughness value, give it a Clearcoat effect with a rather low Clearcoat Roughness, also a bit of noise bump:

enter image description here

enter image description here

File:

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  • $\begingroup$ Looks very good on your image, but although I guess I did everything as seen in the picture of the nodes I get nothing similar to your result: what I get is basically normal surface color. So would you be so kind and provided your example Blender file so I can test it? $\endgroup$
    – fafa
    Commented Aug 16, 2023 at 8:30
  • $\begingroup$ Sure, here it is: blend-exchange.com/b/7pEbWOoS $\endgroup$
    – moonboots
    Commented Aug 16, 2023 at 8:33
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I've tried to create something that might be helpful... the original color seems to be slightly metallic with some clearcoat over it. Also a bit of "glittering" effect like carpaint. I do not really see a rainbow coloring on the original pieces, but I've put some of that in there, too. This is far from perfect, but I'll upload the file so that you can play around with it.

golden carpaint

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    $\begingroup$ Oh, now this is very nice and to me it resembles more accurately the real thing than the 1st initial approach above: there really is that rainbowishness on the surface if you look closely (on real LEGO brick), not that much of metallic, rather like a thicker lacquere and things going under it playing with the light tho not that much or strongly + I played with the @moonboots file seeing a Blender pearl video on YT achieving quite good result very similar to yours approach although not that advanced as yours as I am total amateur in this regard. Gonna test your file now, thank you. $\endgroup$
    – fafa
    Commented Aug 17, 2023 at 6:06
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To me this approach is the correct one, very similar to what @GordonBrinkmann was proposing today.

In fact - as I commented under his approach - I created my final material design yesterday evening after seeing a YT video about making pearl surface in Blender that pushed me to the right direction: I basically just added mix shaders to mix that pearl effect with the actual BSDF material (I am not sure if I used the noise/bump from the @moonboots file or the one from the YT video or kind-of mix of them both).

Maybe the rainbow fx could be even less visible (I am calling it rainbow but it is more like oil spill in my case, haha), cos it is OK on the head but looks too intensive on the cockpit window, so if there is some sort of distinction how the fx should be strong according to, IDK, flatness of the surface, then it should be added so it would be less visible when the surface is more flat and/or bigger and more visible when the surface is smaller with lots of "angles" (I have no clue if there is something like that in the nodes for Cycles, I am amateur, really).

And this is how it looks (I added @GordonBrinkmann approach side by side for comparison): enter image description here enter image description here enter image description here enter image description here enter image description here enter image description here enter image description here enter image description here enter image description here

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  • $\begingroup$ It would have been nice (since you accepted this as the correct answer) if you would have uploaded the file or at least showed a screenshot your node setup... this site's intention to provide answers for all users who might have similar problems, and just showing comparison images is not really helping anyone. It's like posting the original pieces and saying: just make it look like that. 😉 It would have been nice to know what you changed to make it its own answer. In your images it looks like just the color is different, but my goal was not the exact color but the metallic and pearl effect. $\endgroup$
    – Gordon Brinkmann
    Commented Aug 19, 2023 at 17:45
  • $\begingroup$ @GordonBrinkmann oh, sorry - I will later today, have some work at the moment... $\endgroup$
    – fafa
    Commented Aug 21, 2023 at 10:09

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