Fusion 360 - Customize / create Appearance Materials for renders - Carbon Fiber

[trancethereal]

I love Fusion 360!! 

It's been an amazing tool to learn (still learning) and use ... currently I am working on a project and need to create some renders as part of our design process. In this case, the Fusion 360 supplied appearance material (Carbon Fiber) will not work and I would like to either modify or create a custom version (hopefully, utilizing any of the default appearance to make it easier). 

I have two objectives:

1) Create a custom weave pattern that simulates real world material we might use (see example of 3D Jacquard pattern) - here, the material is uniform in color and characteristics... and only the weave pattern is the goal

2) Create a custom "metallic" thread within the carbon fiber weave pattern. Here, the metallic thread woven within the carbon fiber material has dissimilar color and characteristics - in short, the metallic thread has reflectivity or shiny-ness to it.  This might be odd or a challenge - as how would I assign the color value, surface, and reflective value for the metallic thread which will different than the standard carbon fiber material that it is woven into? 

Here are images of the real world material for both objectives (and an optional box weave pattern). I looked for something online to assist - but not successful, so I thought I would reach out to the community to see if someone has some experience or can point me in the right direction. I am comfortable with photoshop / illustrator .. and have no issues putting in the work... just need some guidance.

Best,

Chris

3D Jacquard - close up3D Jacquard - view 13D Jacquard - view 2Blue metallic threadBlue metallic thread - close upGold metallic thread - close up of weave patternRed metallic threadChecker board pattern (optional)

[TrippyLighting]

#1 is easier and achievable.

In order to create any of those you need to familiarize yourself with bump maps, normal maps, diffuse maps and specularity/roughness maps.

#2 is going to be more difficult as that also includes anisotropy, so you'll need a map for that as well.

Here is a screenshot of the advanced material controls you'll find in the Carbon Fiber material that comes with Fusion 360. You will need to create your own maps and fill all of these "slots" with your own.

If you need to do this more often I would suggest you use specialized software for material creation.

Substance Painter is the gold standard for this 

[trancethereal]

Hi Peter (Trippy) - 

Thank you for the quick response. I have seen those advanced material controls (played around to experiment with the default carbon fiber). But, honestly, I am not sure how each of those controls yields certain outcomes - or said another way, I don't know which control to use to get a given result. I've started experimenting, but still not understanding (yet).

You mentioned the control features - and based on the screenshot, not sure their corresponding F360 location nomenclature

1) Bump Map = Relief Map (this was labeled, so obvious)

2) Normal Map = Is this "Base Highlights"

3) Diffuse Maps = ??

4) Specularity / Roughness Maps = ??

5) Anistropy = ??

I like the Adobe Substance Painter - never seen that before. Is that available to Cloud users? Do you just import your model as an .stl ... (and is this a better render environment and worth the time/investment)?

Again - thank you for the tips!

Chris