Dark metal PBR effect in Skyrim

[cain9580]

Has anyone had any luck making dark metallic objects not look like plastic? I have no problem getting standard metals look fine by using the environment mask as a spec gloss map and making a cube map that encompasses the range of a particular metallic color. When it comes to stuff like ebony crafted items or darker fantasy metals this approach fails and you are left with poo.

 

I am burning through ideas on a method so I figured I would ask here. For those of you who may not be knowledgeable about what PBR renders are I will give a quick brief. I am a reasonably intelligent and learned guy and I took to physics and chemistry at a young age so I see it from a slightly different perspective than the guides and tutorials I have found online.

 

Basically, most of the stuff we see diffuses light to a degree when it interacts with the surface and subsurface structure. It either gets bounced around or scattered but some of it gets converted to heat. The scattered diffused light leaves the surface at whatever wavelength was not absorbed and we see this as color. This is how it works for objects that are not what we would see as a conductor.

 

Metals behave a bit differently and this is where my explanation differs from the once you see online. Try not to think of metal as reflecting light. What actually happens is light hits the surface at a certain energy level and the photons interact with the outer layer of valance electrons in the metal. This creates a charge imbalance and some of those electrons can escape as photoelectric photons. Light is, in a sense, emitted from metal instead of reflected. This is why if you apply a slight charge to a metal the emission spectrum will increase and if you apply a negative balance charge the emission will decrease. It is also why better conductors will emit a more heavily colored âreflectionâ like gold or copper.

 

That being said I have tried to use this to develop my methods for trying to make the best textures I can and I am getting better for the most part. For dark metals though I am getting a bit stumped. I typically like to come at these problems myself but I figured I would put this out there and see if anyone else was able to solve this using the Skyrim textures and shaders.

 

Thanks.