STEP By STEP COMBINING Two MATERIALS

01 open your new Material

Open up your new material and use the default BSDF as a starting point. For this we will use a texture to create a rock material, with displacement driven by another texture. I used a normal map in the Bump slot to add some finer surface detail. You can use procedurals here too, but you will need to click Options then open MXED to see the appropriate settings.

03 Make a greyscale MAP

Now you will need to create a greyscale map to define where the gold material will appear on the rock. You can use a noise or gradient, or any other procedural shader. However, I used Photoshop to create my own, based on seams with a little noisy detail at the edges, along with some extra small spots showing. The key here is that white will be 100 per cent visible, black 0 per cent and then shades of grey for the rest, which are best to avoid.

02 PREPARE Second Material

Right-click BSDF and rename it something appropriate, then right-click on Layer and choose Add BSDF from the pop up. This will be our second material. Here you can add some colour and set the IOR. I used one of the measured files that ships with Maxwell. Set the Roughness of the Gold layer down to around 2-10, to get a good shine. Right-click to add a gloss coat.

04 Place THE weight MAP

All that’s left to do is plug the newly created weight map into the right place. Select the Gold layer and click the grey chequered box next to Weight. In the new window that opens, click the little folder icon and locate your map. You can use this map to add a little bump to the gold too, added in the same way to the Gold Bump Channel. You should now see the preview update with the gold only showing where you wanted it to be, driven by your map.