CarPaint
note
This page is a part of continuing efforts to make the LightWave documentation complete. If a link takes you back to the main page, it leads to a page that hasn't yet been created. Let us know if you find one!
CarPaint is a material for creating vehicle paint-like effects. It has settings to create varying depths of varnish ( called Clearcoat) and the ability to have iridescent effects.
Paint Color (Color)
The color of the paint layer for your Carpaint.
Paint Specularity (Scalar)
The amount of shine from the paint itself, before the Clearcoat layer is taken into account.
Paint Roughness (Scalar)
A Roughness of 0 % will give a completely.
Paint Bump Height (Scalar)
The amplitude assigned to the Paint Bump Map.
Iridescence (Scalar)
Also known as goniochromism, this describes how some surfaces change color with the viewing angle such as is seen with soap bubbles and sea shells. It is a percentage value dictating how much light will be reflected from your surface and has some specific parameters:
Thickness (Scalar)
This is the distance, measured in nanometers, between the surface of your car paint and the paint layer itself. Varying it will cause interesting effects as the wavelengths from the following three fields complement and interfere with each other.
Wavelength (Vector)
The three Wavelength fields labelled X, Y and Z each representing the visible portion of the light spectrum where numbers near the low of 380 nm will be blue and those near the upper level of 750 nm red.
Refraction Index (Scalar)
Since the Clearcoat has a depth, it needs an Index of Refraction. The default 1.5 should be good for most instances, but for those times when you need diamond Clearcoat put it up to 2.4.
Clearcoat Specularity (Scalar)
The Clearcoat can have a different level of specularity to the underlying paint color.
Clearcoat Roughness (Scalar)
This value diffuses the sharp reflections in the Clearcoat layer.
Clearcoat Bump Height (Scalar)
The amplitude assigned to the Paint Bump Map.
Flake Height (Scalar)
How far they stand out from the paint layer.
Flake Density (Scalar)
How much of the surface is covered by flakes. at 0 %, no flakes are visible and at 100 % no paint is (unless Opacity is set to less than 100 %).
Flake Distance Falloff (Scalar)
Because the flakes could play havoc with anti-aliasing when they are far away, the FallOff is for the flakes to become invisible when the camera is the defined distance away.
Flake Scale (Scalar)
The size of individual flakes as a percentage of coverage. Small values here are better.
Paint / Clearcoat Normal (Vector)
This input offers the possibility to add a normal map to the Paint and Clearcoat layers.
Paint / Clearcoat Bump (Vector)
And this will add a more simple bump map.
note
Contributed by Richard Feeney