Leather material help needed

[Alejandro_66]

Hello Indigo community,
I'm having a very hard time trying (and i emphasize on the word "trying") rendering realistic leather materials.
The material (white leather) available on the online materail database, doesn't work well for me.
Am i doing something wrong?
Using Indigo RT exporter for Sketchup.
Any tips, tutorials or link to past topic about this subject?
Thank you all very much and your help is really appreciated.
Kind regards,
Alejandro

[bubs]

From memory that leathers of Oscar was for a very shiny finish... try lowering the exponent value...

Do you have a reference / sample image of the finish you are after?

[Oscar J]

Sorry for my crap leather.

[Alejandro_66]

Hello Bubs,
Here's what i'm trying to achieve and what i'm getting...

[Zom-B]

Here's what i'm trying to achieve and what i'm getting...

Seems like you are missing the material basics!
Working only with premade stuff will at some point bring you exactly in this situation!

Check the indigo materials here: http://www.indigorenderer.com/documenta ... rial-types

What you need is a phong material with a base color texture
Then you need a BW texture for defining the Exponent of the leather, bright areas in this texture cause sharp reflections, and dark cause blurry reflections.

The same map in the Fresnel channel wil cause to have much reflection in the bright areas, and no or less reflection in the dark parts.

Bump should be self explaining!

Check out this old but still 90% valid tutorials for Skindigo:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=P ... A2CD263FE1
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=P ... 9b6eUq-9QV

Good luck!

[Alejandro_66]

Thank you very much Zom-B! I will work on this and post (hopefully) better results.
Kind regards,
Alejandro

[bubs]

I've uploaded a grey leather to the Mat Database that should be pretty close to what you're looking for. I would advise you to use it as a learning tool. Have a look at each of the images used in each slot, and the values assigned to get the result.

Have a play about with all the value and learn what difference each makes to the material. All good materials take a LOT of trial and error, and test renders to get exactly what you are looking for.

I did a VERY basic run through of what the different elements do, and how to go about making a material from scratch in this post http://www.indigorenderer.com/forum/vie ... 19&t=13003 you might find it helpful.

Good luck and keep posting!

[Alejandro_66]

Thank you very much Bubs for your reply and for taking the time to help me. I greatly appreciate. I will try just like you instruct me and will post my results. By the way if that is a render of a leather sofa that you posted, it is unbelievable!!! WOW!!! That's eye candy... Again my sincere thanks my friend.
Kind regards,
Alejandro

[bubs]

No problem!

A tip for using these types of materials in SketchUp - to keep your SU file size down, open the diffuse map (colour / albedo) in Photoshop and make a low res version (for example for this leather I have a Low res version at 25% size). Use this low res image in your SketchUp model as a 'placeholder' and either set the material type to LinkedIGM if you have a saved Indigo Material file ( .igm or .pigm ) or if you are making a unique texture in SketchUp change the albedo slot from 'SketchUP' to 'Texture' and link to the high res version!