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I’m trying to create a material for a button on a music control panel. It looks like a plastic glossy button with some colourful light coming from behind.

I’m using EEVEE engine, so I tried bumping the transmission to 100% and also checking the refraction in the render settings, but it’s not the best looking button, it seems not transparent.

enter image description here

Q: How to create a realistic looking shader for that plastic knob using eevee?

jachym michal
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blender breath
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1 Answers1

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Two ways that seem to work

  1. Glass Shader with a Mesh light inside

    • enable Screen Space Refraction (in render tab and material setting)
    • set refraction depth to a non-zero number (to fake the glass thickness)
    • I used a musgrave texture to fake uneven light intensity

  2. Translucent BSDF shader, with a Point light inside.

    • nicely simulates different thickness and light intensity
    • just keep in mind, that Eevee is limited to 128 lights per scene

Glass button with a Mesh light inside enter image description here

Translucent button with a Point light inside enter image description here

jachym michal
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  • Hi Jackym.

    That's what I was trying to achieve, I was making a button transparent to give it reflections, and then adding a small mesh with emission within the glass button so it can emit light, But once I place the emission mesh in the glass, nothing is happening. I thought that the transparent object would be 100% like glass. Would it be possible instead of sun light, to have emission? Mostly I'm asking from technical aspect, although your answer is 100% correct and does magic in my scene!

    Kind regards.

     – blender breath Apr 18 '20 at 07:43
  • Hey :). I couldn't make it work at first, but now it seems to work. I updated the answer. – jachym michal Apr 18 '20 at 09:31
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    Great stuff, thank you! – blender breath Apr 18 '20 at 10:07
  • Happy to help. Learned some new stuff too :). – jachym michal Apr 18 '20 at 10:08