Creating a Bakelite material

Bakelite is a very common type of plastic and can be found in a lot of different colors and patterns. In this recipe, we will create the black type (which was once really common), as shown in this screenshot:

The black Bakelite material as it appears in the final rendering

Getting ready...

Start Blender and load the 9931OS_Suzanne_start.blend file again:

1. With the mouse arrow in the Camera view, press the T key. Select the Suzanne mesh. Go to the Tools tab under the Tool Shelf panel on the left. Select Flat under Shading. Press T again to close the Tool Shelf panel.
2. Go to the Object modifiers window in the Properties panel. Expand the Subdivision Surface modifier panel and set the levels both for View and Render to 1.

How to do it...

Now we are going to create the material by performing the following steps:

1. Go to the Material window and click on New (or do this as usual, in the Node Editor toolbar). Rename the material Plastic_Bakelite_Black.
2. Set the Viewport Shading mode of the Camera view to Rendered.
3. Switch the Diffuse BSDF shader with a Mix Shader node, and in the first Shader slot, select a Diffuse BSDF shader. In the second Shader slot, select a Glossy BSDF node.
4. Change the Diffuse BSDF color to pure black and the Glossy BSDF shader color to light gray (RGB to 0.253). Set the Roughness value of the Glossy BSDF shader to 0.100 and the Fac value of the Mix Shader node to 0.800.
5. Press Shift + D to duplicate the Mix Shader node, and paste it between the Glossy BSDF shader and the first Mix Shader node.
6. With the mouse arrow in the Node Editor window, press N. Select the first Mix Shader node, and in the Label slot in the Active Node panel on the right, write Mix Shader1. Select the second Mix Shader node, and in the Label slot, write Mix Shader2.
7. Add an Anisotropic BSDF shader (press Shift + A and navigate to Shader | Anisotropic BSDF) and connect its output to the second input socket of the Mix Shader2 node.
8. Set the Mix Shader2 node's Fac value to 0.500. Set the Anisotropic BSDF node's color to light gray, and set the same color for the Glossy BSDF shader (that is, RGB to 0.253). Set the Glossy BSDF shader's Roughness value to 0.100 and Rotation to 0.500 as shown in the following screenshot:
   

   The simple shader network for the basic Bakelite material

9. Save the file as Plastic_Bakelite.blend.

How it works...

Basically, we made the same kind of material as the green plastic material, but this time, we enhanced the reflectivity (mirror) by lowering the Roughness value. We also added an Anisotropic BSDF specularity effect with the same roughness and color as those for the Glossy BSDF shader. The Rotation value of the Anisotropic BSDF shader sets the flow of the highlights on the mesh. The direction of the specularity rotates as this value increases from 0.000 to 1.000.

Anisotropy is a method of enhancing image quality of textures on surfaces that are far away and steeply angled with respect to the point of view. An anisotropic surface will change in appearance as it rotates about its geometric normal.

There's more...

Starting from the black material, let's now try to make a differently processed Bakelite material, as shown in the following screenshot:

A different type of Bakelite

First, we'll make a node group of the Bakelite material by performing the following steps:

1. Click on the material name and rename it Plastic_Bakelite2. Then save the file as Plastic_Bakelite2.blend.
2. Select the Diffuse BSDF, Glossy BSDF, Anisotropic BSDF, and two Mix Shader nodes and press Ctrl + G to make a group.
3. Click and drag the Diffuse BSDF node's Color socket into the empty socket of the Group Input node. Drag the Fac socket of the Mix Shader2 node, and in the Interface subpanel of the Properties panel of the Node Editor window, rename it Aniso. This will drive the influence of the anisotropic shader on the glossy shader. Click and drag the Fac socket of the Mix Shader1 node to the empty socket of Group Input node. Rename it Spec. This will drive the amount of final specularity of the shader. Here is a screenshot of the creation of the Bakelite node group for your reference:
   

   The creation of the Bakelite node group

4. Press Tab to close the group. Rename it Bakelite.

Now we'll add the nodes needed to create the differently colored material that we decided at the beginning of this section:

1. In the Node Editor window, add the following nodes in linear sequence from left to right: a Texture Coordinate node (press Shift + A and navigate to Input | Texture Coordinate), a Mapping node (press Shift + A and navigate to Vector | Mapping), a Noise Texture node (press Shift + A and navigate to Texture | Noise Texture), a ColorRamp node (press Shift + A and navigate to Converter | ColorRamp), and a MixRGB node (press Shift + A and navigate to Color | MixRGB).
2. Connect the Object output of the Texture Coordinate node to the Vector input of the Mapping node, and the output of this node to the input of the Noise Texture node. Connect the Color output of the Noise Texture node to the ColorRamp input socket, and the Color output of the ColorRamp node to the Color1 input socket of the MixRGB node. Connect the Color output of the MixRGB node to the Color input of the Bakelite node group.
3. Set the Noise Texture node's Scale to 4.000, Detail to 4.200, and Distortion to 1.700.
4. Set the ColorRamp node's Interpolation to B-Spline. Move the black color marker to position 0.277 and the white color marker to 0.686.
5. Set MixRGB node's Blend Type to Divide (but remember to experiment with the other types as well) and the Fac value to 0.600. Change the Color2 values of R to 0.799, G to 0.442, and B to 0.220.
6. In the Bakelite node group interface, set the Spec value to 0.300, as shown in the following screenshot:
   

   Adding texture details to the Bakelite node group

7. You can also smooth the Suzanne mesh in the Tool Shelf panel (press T) and increase the Subdivision levels of the Subdivision Surface modifier to 2.
8. Save the file.