Lee Griggs shows how to make a non-physical iridescent shading effect in Arnold with a few nodes.

Most rendering engines, like Arnold, will have a thin film or iridescent shader in a PBR workflow. This tutorial from Autodesk’s Arnold Rendering Specialist Lee Griggs shows how to make your own from scratch.

The setup uses the facing_ratio shader, ramp_rgb, and color_correct shaders. “This is a fake effect -If you want something that is more physically correct, then you should use standard_surface.thin_film,” Griggs says.