Glossy of scientific measurements for different materials?

[Sid Edwards]

Is there a reliable book or website that says, for a specific type of material, how much roughness, anisotropy, fresnel, color, transparency and etc that a material has? For instance, what if I had aluminum versus silicon? How would I know what attributes to give different shaders in blender?

[Martin Bergwerf]

Hi Sid,

Most of the attributes you mention are not dependent on the material. There are websites that list the IOR of different materials though, for instance:

https://pixelandpoly.com/ior.html

and more scientific and complete:

https://refractiveindex.info/ 

But the ‘best’ and most common way, is to use your eyes and try to reproduce what you see (although using the listed IOR’s as a starting point might help).

[Dwayne Savage]

They only have a few materials, but it might help. Just make sure to change engine to Blender. 

 https://physicallybased.info/

[Omar Domenech]

Yeah as Martin said, in the end it’s more about the eye than anything else. I remember a lesson from Bartek Skorupa where he plugged in dozens of nodes and math nodes and IOR values to get real life gold down to the scientific level, spent a lot of time on it, only to have it look as good as what you get with two or three nodes. He concluded it was a waste of time to approach shading and materials that way and advised everyone to not overcomplicate. Of course there is no right or wrong here, only preference. 

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