Blender Tutorial - Procedural Cracked Surface Material

hello everybody and welcome back to another blender made easy tutorial today we're going to be creating this lava crack surface material in blender the material that we'll be creating is not too advanced so if you are a beginner this tutorial is perfect for you here is the preview of the node setup that we will be creating to make our life easier let's first enable two things in the user preferences one is going to be the node wrangler and the other one is the extra shading pi menu items to do this go over to edit down to preferences then underneath the navigation tab or actually key map make sure extra shading pi menu is turned on this will allow you to press z and you'll see material preview and then all the other extra things that you see here this is very useful for this tutorial next up in the user preferences we're going to go underneath the add-ons and then enable the node wrangler add-on by typing in node and then making sure the node wrangler add-on is turned on this will make our life much easier when dealing with nodes i'm going to delete the default cube and then press shift a and add in a uv sphere to give ourselves a little bit more geometry on this ub sphere i'm going to go over to the modifier tab click add modifier and click on subdivision surface or the shortcut ctrl 2. then we can right click and go shade smooth from there we can start working on the material i'm going to split this window right here by dragging in the top right corner and switching this over to the shader editor then i'll press n to close off that panel and give it a new material the first thing that we are going to do with this procedural material is creating the cracks we're going to do something a little bit similar to this tutorial by adding in a varana texture first so i'll press shift a underneath texture add in average texture with the node wrangler add-on if you control shift left-click on any node it will add in a viewer node connected to the material output so if we press z and go into material preview we can see exactly what this node is doing with this varana texture i'm going to switch this over to distance to edge and this will allow us to have the cracks as you can see and then for the scale of the cracks i'm gonna set it up to nine and that is looking pretty good now currently they're all very straight and not very realistic so in order to fix that we're going to use a noise texture to influence the vector location i'm going to press shift a add in a texture and a noise texture then i'll press shift a add in a color mix rgb and then finally i'll add in a texture coordinate node so i'll press shift a go to input and texture coordinate and we'll place that here we're going to take the generated plug that into the noise and then the generated is going to go into the bottom input of this mix node so what i'm going to do is take the factor value plug that into the top input of the mix node and then the color is going to go into the vector this factor value controls if you want zero noise or a lot of noise i'm going to bring this up to a value of about 0.8 so let's go with 0.85 actually and then for the noise texture we're going to set the scale up to 15. now we're starting to get a lot more detail and then of course the detail is going to go all the way up to 16. and then maybe a slight amount of roughness to make this look even better we're going to add in a color ramp to determine where the black and white values are so i'll add in a converter color ramp and place that here then all we have to do is take the white value drag it closer to the black value and then we get this when dealing with large node setups it's very important to stay organized so since this all these nodes right here are for the cracks i'm going to click and drag to draw a box around each of the nodes and then hit control j this will add in a frame if we press the n key to open up the properties panel we can name this frame and i'm just going to call it cracks if you want to you can give it a color but i'm just going to leave it as black so now if we select the frame and g to move it will move all those nodes at once next up let's create this surface of the material so all of the black bumps and everything like that to do this we're going to be adding in another noise texture so i'll press shift a go to texture and then noise and then we'll place that here the scale we will leave at 5 and the detail map i'm going to drag that all the way up to 16. let's control shift left click on this to see what it looks like the distortion i'm going to drag up to 0.16 just to give it a slight amount of distortion then we're going to press shift a add in a color ramp to determine where the noise is on our on our surface and i'm going to actually flip this color ramp just like this and i'm going to drag the white value slightly closer to the black value this is also going to enable us to have different variations in the height of our surface so some parts will be flat and some parts will be bumpy to combine both the cracks and this noise texture we're going to add in a color mix rgb and we'll place that here and this is actually going to go into the factor input then the color is going to go into the top input of the mix and this is going to be set to black just like that so now to get all the bumps we're going to press shift a add in a vector bump node and place that here take the color and plug that into the height then the normal into the normal of the principled shader now if we can control shift left click on this this is what we're going to get if it will load there we go this is what we're getting and that is looking pretty cool but it's currently all white so we're going to set the base color not completely back but just slightly above it right about there and then the roughness i'm going to drag all the way up to 0.9 and there we go we now have cracks in our material and it's looking pretty cool the strength of it is slightly too high so let's drag that down to 0.8 so if you want bigger cracks in your material just drag the color ramp over this way and you'll get bigger ones if you want smaller ones drag it closer to the black value you also might notice that some parts of our material also have the flat spots so if you want more variation you can drag this up and more flat will come in i'm going to drag it up just slightly just like that the next step is to take the cracks and then add an emission value to those to do this we're going to press shift a add in a shader and emission shader we'll place that here then we're going to mix both of these shaders together by adding in a mix shader we're going to take the emission plug that into the top input and that's going to go into the bottom input and then this color value from the color ramp is going to go into the factor once we do this you'll notice that all of the cracks now have this emission shader with the emission shader you can give it a color if you want to and it might look a little bit better but what i'm going to do is actually add in another noise texture to influence the color because right now if we were to switch this over to an orange color everything would have that same exact orange color and it wouldn't look as good so instead we're going to add in multiple colors to give it some variation instead of adding a new noise texture we're going to grab the one down here select it shifty it and drag it up you might notice though that it's still in the frame so to remove it from the frame you can press alt p on your keyboard and that will remove it i'm also going to add in a new converter color ramp to add in some different colors i'll take the color value plug that into the factor then the color into the emission color for this color ramp we're going to add in a new handle and we're going to do three different colors the one on the far left is going to have a nice tan color so i'll drag this up somewhere around here is probably good and then for this middle node we're going to select it and this is going to be a red color then the one on the far right is going to have an orange color so something like this the scale of the noise texture we're going to drag up to let's say 95 we'll try that and there you go now we have some variation and that's looking much better the distortion i might drag up to a value of 1 and this might look a little bit better the strength of the emission we're also going to turn up to 15. we're going to organize our nodes once again so i'm going to box select all of these ctrl j to add in a frame and with this frame i'm going to call it cracks color i'll give it a color and i'll set it to an orange before we do any more nodes let's actually do a couple of eb settings so we can see the material a little bit better i'm going to go over to the ev settings right here turn on bloom screen space reflections then over in the world settings i'm going to set the color of the world all the way down to black i'm going to select the light in our scene as well and then switch it over to a sun lamp with a strength of 4. so now if we press z and go into rendered view this is the look that we're getting if i toggle overlays our material is starting to look pretty good one thing that we're going to do though is limit the amount of cracks in our material because right now it's everywhere and the light is also everywhere so we're going to fix that to do that i'm going to select this noise texture once again shift d it and then press alt p to remove it from that frame and drag it up to the top i'm going to add in another color ramp so press shift add in a color ramp if we take the color value we can plug that into the color ramp and with these settings i think all these settings are actually pretty good for what i want so we're going to leave them as they are and then i'm also going to add in a color mix rgb and place that here we're going to mix both of these together so this noise texture and this verrani texture we're going to mix them so the cracks aren't everywhere on our material i'll take the color plug that into the top input and then this color is going to go into the factor the color of this we need to drag all the way up to white if we ctrl shift left click on this we can see this is the effect that we're getting so we're going to have to play around with this color ramp to get the desired effect i'm also going to flip this color ramp drag the white closer and then also drag the black closer so if you want less cracks drag the white closer to the black and it will get rid of a lot of those crafts and i'm happy with that so the cracks aren't appearing everywhere now on our material and then of course we're going to take this color and this is going to be the factor of the emission so plug that into the factor control shift left click on the mix shader we can see the emission is now not everywhere on our material and it might be a little bit too much still so i'll drag this this way slightly there we go something like that to make this stand out a little bit more we can bring the strength of the emission up to 25 and that might look slightly better all right the last thing that we will do with this material is add in a little bit of atmosphere now the way i did this previously in the planet tutorial is i used this normal node and it just did not work as good so i have found a much much better way to add in an atmosphere and it will actually interact with the light so if you were to move the light source it will also move the atmosphere as well i found out this trick watching a nebula oblivion tutorial i'll put the video down in the description if you want to check it out so how this is gonna work is we're going to actually add in a shader and a diffuse shader and then we'll control shift left click on this shader to preview it next up we're going to convert this shader into an rgb value which we can use as a mask so i'm going to press shift a add in a converter and then shader to rgb and we'll place that here so now if we preview this this is the effect that we're getting to get the atmosphere to only appear along the edges we're going to add in a fresnel node so press shift a add in a fresnel and we'll place that here if we ctrl shift left click on this this is the effect that we're getting so now if we combine both of these we're going to get the atmosphere effect i'll add in a color mix rgb and place that here this is going to go into the top input and the shader is going to go into the factor this color down here i'm going to drag all the way down to black and it looks like we actually need to invert this so i'm going to add in a color ramp we'll place that here and then flip the direction of this color ramp so click on this menu and click on flip color ramp so now we're getting this atmosphere effect and if we rotate this sun lamp it'll also rotate it just like that i'm going to drag the black a little bit closer to the white so we get a little bit more of an atmosphere and then from here we need to add in another emission and plug that into a mix shader so i'll press shift a add in a shader emission we'll place that down here then of course we're going to add in a mix shader we'll take the mix shader plug that into the top input and then this emission is going to go into the bottom and then all of this node setup that we just created right here this is going to be the factor if we ctrl shift left click on this now we should be able to see the atmosphere effect and there we go we can see it just like that the color though is not the right color so i'm going to set the color over to an orange something like this maybe a little bit more of a red if you want less of an atmosphere you can change the furnace node down here which i might do so if i drag this a little bit lower it'll close up on that atmosphere and this is the effect that we're getting and there we go now that we've created our material all we have to do is just tweak some of the colors if you want to so for example this red color i might drag up to more of a lighter red and i think that might look a little bit better and then this value here i'll drag a little bit this way something like this and this is very customizable so if you wanted to change it over to an ice planet you can do that really easily we'll add in a color hue saturation place that there so now if we change the hue it will also change that so let's go with a blue and then over in the principled shader if we change the base color over to a light gray or white we get this sort of an effect if you want bigger cracks in your material over in this color ramp just drag this down a little bit you can get some bigger cracks but there you go that is how you create a procedural cracked surface material i'm going to press ctrl spacebar to go full screen on the nodes so you can see it all in one setting thank you for watching this tutorial if you created something cool i would love to see it so make sure to send it to me over on instagram at blendermadeeasy i hope you found this tutorial useful and if you did consider leaving a like and subscribing for more tutorials in the future that's going to be it thanks for watching and i will see you in the next one

Channel: Blender Made Easy

Views: 35,505

Keywords: blender, tutorial, space, lava, material, blender tutorial, procedural, nodes, blender 3d, blender 2.9, cracked, surface, noise, texture, b3d, eevee, cycles, beginner, animation, blender animation, easy, blendermadeeasy, blender made easy, blender 2.8

Id: XFDQrdRmDwc

Length: 15min 1sec (901 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 13 2020