Metals

×Metals library

In the Asset Browser, choose Reblend in the library menu. It has 138 metal materials in one Metals folder, sorted by finish: all 28 metals polished, the common ones also satin, brushed, bead-blasted, hammered, knurled or as checker plate. Beside them, Anodised has titanium and aluminium, and Aged has tarnished silver and copper, rusted iron, and copper and bronze patina.

Each metal's colour comes from its measured optical constants, n and k, or for the 18K golds and bronzes from a measured colour, and stays exact in Rec.709, Rec.2020 and ACEScg files. Brushed metals stretch reflections into a streak across the grain, with a weak haze around it, following measurements of real brushed aluminium and steel. The streak is stretched 10 to 1, the most Blender's Metallic BSDF allows; the measured samples reach 25 to 1 (steel) and 31 to 1 (aluminium).

Fingerprints are an oil film on top of the metal, not a change in roughness: the film has its own faint reflection, and the metal's reflection underneath stays sharp. They are on every finish except hammered, checker plate, rust and patina; Smudges sets how many show, and 0 removes them.

Scratches differ between soft and hard metals, and on satin and bead-blasted finishes they show as glossier lines.

Knurled metals have the five patterns of DIN 82: diamond, straight, diagonal, cross and cross indented, on stainless steel, aluminium, brass, titanium and iron. The knurl runs around the object's Z axis at 0.8 mm pitch, with lathe marks on the end faces; bores stay plain. Knurl Pitch (mm) sets its size. Each object takes one tooth count from its own diameter, so the pattern stays whole on tapered or curved parts; Knurl Diameter (mm) on the material overrides it. Tick Displacement for real teeth; it needs Adaptive Subdivision on the object.

Anodised aluminium comes bead-blasted and brushed in 13 colours. Clear, black, green, orange, light gold and dark gold follow measured anodised aluminium; the seven in Aluminium Colours are chosen colours. Dye Colour sets any other colour. On bead-blasted anodising, scratches show the bare metal.

Edge Wear. Every material has Edge Wear and Wear Width (mm), under Surface. At 0, the default, there is no wear. Raise it and exposed edges and corners wear: anodised, tarnished, rusted and patinated metals rub through to the bare metal, and tarnish, rust and patina also build up in inside corners; satin, brushed, bead-blasted, hammered, knurled and checker-plate finishes burnish to a polish; polished metals scuff to a satin sheen. Raising Edge Wear adds the Edge Wear modifier, last in the stack, to every object that uses the material, as Shade Auto Smooth adds Smooth by Angle. If you remove it, it stays removed until Edge Wear goes back to 0 and up again. The modifier is also in Add Modifier > Edit. Wear Width is set on the material, in real millimetres at any object scale, so there is no need to apply scale: 1.5 mm suits hand-held products; raise it for larger objects. Wear follows the modelled edges, so knurl teeth and checker-plate treads do not wear. The modifier only recomputes when the mesh or the width changes: moving, rotating or scaling the object costs nothing.

Tarnished silver and copper and anodised titanium are thin-film interference: a film of silver sulphide, copper oxide or titanium oxide at a real thickness over the measured metal. The tarnish stages are also in the Metallic BSDF's Metal menu, and anodised titanium has a slider for the oxide thickness.

Rust and patina colours come from measured mineral spectra, and bronze patina matches colours measured on weathered outdoor sculptures.

Textures are sized in real millimetres, whatever the object's scale.