SilverwingVFX shows how to “roll your own” car paint shader using the Layered Material in Octane C4D.

Car paint shaders are tricky. They combine a few things to make one shader, like metallic flakes, coats, and more. While most Render Engines will have a physical Car Paint shader, you can create one from scratch.

SilverwingfVFX (Raphael Rau) shows how to make one using the Layered Material in Octane under Cinema 4D. “I hope I lived up to the expectations, and even if you have made a lot of car paint shaders already, learn something new,” Rau says. “So this time, we dive into the Layered Material to create our car paint layers.”

Rau often takes specific rendering and general CG techniques and does a deep dive, showing off things like working with nested dielectrics, ray switch nodes, and working with cryptomatte.