Reply To: Shading a floating barrel

[Jonathan Lampel]

 I added a colour ramp node with the barrels to try to give me some control of the gradient but it is probably wrong.

That’s not wrong! It’s a great solution. 

it lies below the water line and I have no idea how to bring it up

The object texture coordinate is based on the origin point of the water object, so first make sure the surface of the water is roughly at the same height as its origin. If that’s not it, try changing the vector mapping node to Point instead of Vector so that you can adjust the location and bring it up along the Z axis. 

do not add the two Principled Shaders. Use only one Principled Shader !

Yes! Good catch Spikey. It’s not obvious why that’s important though, so here’s an explanation: 

A BSDF is what tells the render engine what to do with the light that hits the object – reflect it, refract it, scatter it, etc. When you add two BSDFs, you’re bouncing back twice the amount of light that hit the object in the first place. That’s impossible! So the Add shader is meant for things like emission, transparency, or certain volume effects. 

The problem is that I have no idea what the nodes are doing so I am just playing about with values blindly. I have a decent grasp of shading but when it comes to technical stuff like this I am lost.  

I know what that feels like! Keep at it and believe me that it will make more sense as you go along. If you need a rundown on what a specific node does, just ask. You got this 💪