SOFT WARE: BLENDER
Crystals can make for truly spectacular elements in our scenes – if we create them correctly. To get a genuinely true-to-life crystal, the best process is the procedural method, which allows you to create materials from scratch in a much more free and creative manner. Sometimes making such materials can be quite the challenge, but following my simple method here, you’ll be able to make an impressive and realistic crystal material in mere minutes.
First of all, let’s select the mesh that we want to apply the crystal material to, and then in the Material panel check the Add Node option in order to start the material creation. The software will generate the base node, a Principled BSDF, linked to the Material Output. Now we also need to add the following nodes on top: a Color Ramp, a Bump, two Noise Textures, and a Texture Coordinate.
Next, let’s start connec ting up these elements. Starting off with the Texture Coordinate, connect the Object output to the Vector inputs of the two Noise Textures. We also link the Factor of the first Noise Texture to the Color Ramp, which then connects to the Roughness input of the Principled BSDF. Going back to the second Noise Texture, we hook up its Color output to the Bump’s Height input, and then the Normal input of the Principled BSDF.
