In this tutorial I will show you how to make a procedural ceramic material in Blender.
Ceramic Material
I will split the viewport and open the shader editor
I also make sure I’m in material preview so I can see my material
I add a new material
I leave the base color as white and increase the subsurface to 0.2
The subsurface will mix the diffuse (white) and the subsurface scattering – this is what happens when light penetrates the surface of a translucent object and then scatters by interacting with the material and ultimately leaving the surface at a different point
You can easily see this in real life when you notice the veins in your ears when you are lit from behind by the sun on a very bright, sunny day
I change the subsurface color to a blue – this is the subsurface scattering color that mixes with the base color [#0003E7]
I change the subsurface IOR to 1.54 and the subsurface anisotropy to 0.25
These two options will only be seen if I am in the cycles renderer
The subsurface IOR is the index of refraction for the subsurface scattering – that is, the indicator of the light bending ability of a particular medium
The subsurface anisotropy controls the direction of the subsurface scattering
I increase the specular to 1.0 and decrease the roughness to 0.1
The specular option refers to the amount of specularity of the surface – that is, how smooth and reflective the surface will be
The roughness field determines how rough the surface will appear – since this is a reflective material, the roughness should be very low
I increase the clearcoat to 1.0 and decrease the clearcoat roughness to 0.1
The clearcoat refers to an extra white specular layer that is placed on top of the other layers – since this is a highly specular material, I increase this strength
The clearcoat roughness refers to the amount of roughness of the clearcoat – in this case, it needs to be low due to the high specularity of this material
I change the IOR to 1.54 – the index of refraction for the subsurface scattering
This particular number is the IOR of ivory which is why I chose it