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Hey all!

Is it me or does it depend on experience to create these super multilayer materials? Take for example some of Toms materials complex as can be in most cases! How do you guys know that you need 10% alloy 5% copper 2% nickel? to create a good metal - Maybe it comes from years of experience I dont know could you guys point me in the right direction - Are there data sheets for this.

Another good example is Tim and Larsson's car paints! Hope Ive made sense

Thanks
Tea_bag

There are two basic points in my material authoring workflow.

A) Understanding the behavior of real life substance I want to simulate.
B) Knowing the functions of parameters in Maxwell Material system.

Most of the time, you can find the direct translation of A in B. Like the surface is bumpy, so I can directly add a bumpmap and that's it. Or surface has mirror reflections but they are not that sharp, so I should set the roughness value of specular value something like 3 or 5 but not 0 nor 50 etc.

Making a translation from A to B requires the ability of decompoising the behaviors on a real life surface. For many cases, you should try to build your explanations with the tools you have to simulate it. For example, you have roughness as a parameter, so you can ask "How rough is my surface?" and use it as a cue. If you don't know how to understand how rough a surface is, you should study basic optics first. Roughness for example, can be easily detected by checking the reflection of light source on the surface. If it has sharp edges like the source itself, it means the surface is not rough and so on.

Sometimes as a 3rd step -which can be quite tricky- you need to emulate/simulate the phenomenon with what you have, no matter how correct your setup depending on physical conditions. This surely needs experience and it's just a matter of time.