>a blender donut died for thisYou know how metalness basically changes the specular color to be the same as the diffuse in a PBR workflow? I've been trying to look for infos on whether specular works the same way in real life or not.In real life, is it simply whether a material is metallic or not if the specular is colored or not?
Meh just go to substance source . com and browse their assetsAll their stuff is better than realistic quality so if you see it there then look in real life, maybe you don't have access to steel or aluminum, you will know how the materials in real life will look.
>>694891Ah, I'm mainly wondering about the real life mechanics of it. I know how PBR shading works, but I don't know the extent with which it schematizes real life.Is it really just dielectric = white specular and conductor = colored specular?
>>694894I was gonna reply some long ass thing, but you basically answered yourself. Yes, in real life, with most common objects, dielectric = white specular and conductor = colored specular. The IOR values are also different for each, obviously.
>>694900Well that settles it. Thanks anon.
>>694878With dielectric materials, light enters the medium a tiny bit, gets diffused and exits again, having picked up the material's color (because the material is absorbing all other colors). That's diffuse reflection and it really is basically a very shallow subsurface scattering. A fraction of the light (about 4 - 8% depending on the material) doesn't enter the material and gets reflected at the surface, not picking up color. That's your specular reflection.Metals behave differently. They are much denser than most dielectric materials and therefore don't scatter the light much at all since light can't enter very far. Just absorption happens - and without scattering, the absorbed light is mostly reflected in the same direction as the specular reflected light which overlaps the specular reflection and makes it seem like it's colored. Metals also seem to have a crazy high absorption rate which explains why in just a few light interactions (1-2 reflection bounces mostly) e.g. gold absorps so much blue that it gets its color while yellow plastic needs hundreds of bounces until it has absorbed enough blue to make it seem yellow.In short, as >>694900 already answered, metals and dielectrics do tend to behave like that IRL.
>>694878Don't forget that it's either dielectric or metal, things irl don't exist in that halfway point (at least I'm pretty sure). The ability to go between is something artists have control over.
>>694939yeah.. way to much people produce metalness maps with a lot of areas of various grey shades but it's mostly wrong.. i mean.. some very special materials might exist in-between irl, but most are either absolutely dielectric or metal
