SPARKLY FABRIC

[dutchesse]

So I have this Architectural wall cover fabric that has a metallic fiber weaved through it wich makes it sparkle slightly.
How do I achieve this to render correctly (I think I have to use masking). I have checked out Majids fabrics but they have too much of a pattern.
Attached is a picture of the fabric.

thanks :0)
Esther

[Fletch]

To simply make it shinier in the places where the metal shows up in the weave, create a specular map that is white where you want it shiniest, and black where you want no shine at all, dark grey for a little shine, light grey for more shine.
Then place this in the Reflection Map Slot after applying something like Paint>Satin template in Twilight.

The shine will not be a strictly metalic shine however, although my guess would be that if you were to change the IOR to something like 4 or 5, then it would give a more metalic look.

To get a much better material, you are correct that you would use masking like Majid's metallic wall fabric examples... in that case you could even open Kerkythea, open his material in the editor and study how it's built, and even perhaps replace the maps in that material with your texture maps. (after creating the required mask)

If you want the quick/dirty way, and will not be looking at the fabric too closely in your rendering, try opening the texture into photoshop and increasing contrast on it... playing with Levels function in Photoshop, and save-as on the image, and use that in your Twilight specular(Reflection) slot and possibly in the bump map slot as well.

Keep in mind that lighting and angle of camera to the surface in comparison to the lighting will be critical for seeing the effects on this material.

In the example below, the contrast was made with the "Exposure" feature in Photoshop, then the image was desaturated and saved as good-quality jpg.

[Fletch]

ps - your supplied image is not tiling seamlessly...
duplicate the layer
run Photoshop Filter>Other>High Pass and it will even out the look of the image
change the other non-high-pass layer to blending mode "Color" and put it above the high-pass layer.
now the image should be a lot less noticibly seamed.
adjust levels of the high-pass filtered image to bring it back close to the tone of the original image.

[dutchesse]

wow, thanks Fletch ... very detailed information ....:0)
going to try it out tonight