How to achieve a clay render look?

[tibotiber]

@mawa

Well, if everything including your walls and lights is dynamic, this technique will not really help

@mawa, yes, I understand that, still that’s a really good PG to understand this technique

@PatrickRyan, we’re completely aligned about custom shaders and the NME. It’s a big one to jump into but it’s also a really exciting opportunity to level up, and the editor really changes the game. Just look at these:

I’m looking forward to be as confident as @PirateJC #2 . I just had a look at the node material docs, and it looks super complete, so that’s gonna be my next “book”. Is it the right place to start for a complete shader noob?

@PatrickRyan

bake ambient occlusion textures and use those as your base color textures to add some cavity detail to the models

Thanks for pointing out this technique. I’ll have to test it out, but most of my assets are pretty flat and low-poly which is not gonna work well as you point out. The desk posted earlier is an old asset that is gonna be phased out and is not representative.

Overall, the ideas that seems adapted to my use-case in this thread are: node material (the matcaps screenshot seems really promising already), SSAO (careful to perf cost). Plus more playing around with lights (hemi), shadows (soft), environment HDR texture, materials.

A big thank you to all. I’ll post on progress, but that’s not gonna be super soon.

PS: @mawa I’ve missed your note on Mirror Edge, love it as well. I’ve been a huge fan of the style of Superhot lately .

[PirateJC]

@tibotiber - I totally understand how intimidating custom shaders can be! I actually wrote a blog article a while back on that very subject.

https://babylonjs.medium.com/fighting-self-doubt-with-water-3b1509218009

That said, it’s a WONDERFULY, BEAUTIFUL world inside NME!!! Can’t wait to have you play around and start your own journey with it!

[tibotiber]

Thanks @PirateJC, I remember reading the article before and liking it, but now was definitely a more timely read. The emotions you share there resonate, I wanna climb your mountain and I’m feeling like this will be me the whole way (this forum is the hand):

Edit: love the sense of humour in the article as well

[mawa]

@PirateJC

it’s a WONDERFULY, BEAUTIFUL world inside NME

Yes, I said I would climb this mountain in 2021 and I will. Well, I sure hope I will soon be able to find the time to at least establish my base camp

[Pauan]

@tibotiber

Does anyone have any pointers on how I could achieve a clay render look to my scene?

Clay is organic. What helps a lot with organic objects is adding some SubSurface Scattering (which you can do with a PBR material). This will soften the shading, giving it a more waxy look.

Babylon.js Node Material Editor

[mawa]

Thanks for sharing that node material. It might be only part of the solution, though it is. Gives me even more envy to quickly start digging into those.

[tibotiber]

Thanks for sharing @Pauan, looks pretty great, and I appreciate the english intro to the NME link haha.