C4D and VRAY - Simple multicolor lego material

It can happen that you need many same objects, but with different colors. If there are 3 or so, there is no problem to make 3 different materials. But what about 200 objects with around 40 color variations? :)


Solutions is simple, C4D shader "Variation" inside a VRAY material.

In this tutorial I will show you how to choose specific colors from picture pallette that will be randomly assigned to objects. In the render below are used only 2 materials, one is for the ground. Scene is lit with one HDRI image (see last tutorial)

1. step: Create VrayAdvancedMaterial

2. step: Turn on "Diffuse Layer 1"
3. step: Click on "Diffuse Layer 1" and next click on arrow by the "Texture Map" under diffuse color. Choose shader Variation from effects.

4. step: Click on choosen Variaton shader a set it like this:

5. step: Click on arrow next to "Gradient".  In expanded menu change Interpolation to "None" and color chooser to "Color from picture"

6. step: Find a "lego pallette" picture and insert it as image to color chooser. By clicking under gradient bar you can add aor change existing colors. For every new color you need to click "+" abowe image and move the picker inside image.

7. step: Set up materials "Specular Layer 1". In my render its about 90% trasparency a very low glossines chnage 0.9-1.


Now you can clone, copy, emmit objects as you wish... With this material assigned, they will have random colors controlled only with position of sliders in gradient. F.e. as on image abowe, slider of red is at 13,52%, so of 100 lego pieces 14 will be red.

P.S.: This tutorial is based on Greyscalegorilla´s YT tutorial for Arnorld renderer, just modified to use in Vray. Lego pieces are modeled by me.