This material uses extremely diffuse lighting and a fairly dense bump map to create a rough surface without the polish of other surfaces.

Load up the file 'ringmask.psd'. This file contains the ring from which the selection set to create the material samples was generated.

If you loaded the ringmask file, you can Ctrl/Cmd-Click the layer with the ring to select it. If you didn't, create a new selection for the bevel.

Before you launch ShapeShifter, make sure you have selected a new layer. This will create the bevel without anything behind it. If you have something, say the black ring mask in the background you might find the edges of the object appear blocky after you apply. This is because the edges are antialiased, and if something is beneath them the antialiasing will appear odd.

When you launch ShapeShifter, you will be presented with the default settings. The material we're about to work on is fairly complex so we'll need to change a number of the basic settings. If you wish, you can load in the Blue Lumpy preset from the tutorial's preset file. The rest of this tutorial assumes that you don't do that.

Note: Depending on the selection you have when launching, you may need to adjust the Bevel Scale in the Main Shape panel to prevent it bevelling too far. Ideally, you want a bevel that looks like a rounded shape and does not 'meet' in the centre causing sharp ridges.

The lights for this material are going to be quite bright, but diffuse so that they do not create pinpoint highlights.

We are going to need five lights in the scene, so let's start by deleting all of the lights in there already.

• Select a light and press the Delete key. This deletes the light.
• When the light is deleted, another one is selected, so keep pressing Delete until they are all gone.
• Make sure the Ambient Glow slider is set to 0%.

The object should now be completely black, and it's time to add some new lights in. First, we'll add a generic light that will apply some light to the entire object.

• Add a new light using the Add Light button.
• Set the Light Brightness to 56%, and the Highlight Sheen to 0%.
• Place this light over the centre of the lighting preview.

This light does not cast a highlight, it just illuminates the surface evenly so that we have a good base to build on. Now we'll add some highlight lights to get a smooth sheen over the surface.

• Add a new light using the Add Light button.
• Set the Light Brightness to 50%, the Highlight Sheen to 35%, and the Highlight Spread to 100%.
• Make sure that the Highlight Type is Diffuse by clicking on the Sharp/Diffuse button.
• Move this light to the top left of the lighting preview.

This light gives us a really large highlight that covers much of the top left of the bevel, but is diffuse so it has nice smooth falloff around the edges rather than a sharp 'wet' highlight. It's also not too bright, so the highlight blends in with the smooth lighting of the normal lights.

• Add a new light using the Add Light button.
• Set the Light Brightness to 56%, the Highlight Sheen to 5%, and the Highlight Spread to 100%.
• Make sure that the Highlight Type is Diffuse by clicking on the Sharp/Diffuse button.
• Move this light to the bottom right of the lighting preview.

Like the first light, this light is nice and smooth, applying just a subtle amount of highlight to the surface rather than a strong illumination.

The next two lights are to even out the balance of lighting at the bottom left and top right of the bevel.

• Add a new light using the Add Light button.
• Set the Light Brightness to 0%, the Highlight Sheen to 10%, and the Highlight Spread to 100%.
• Make sure that the Highlight Type is Diffuse by clicking on the Sharp/Diffuse button.
• Move this light to the bottom right of the lighting preview.
• With this light selected, add a new light using the Add Light button. The new light is a clone of the one that was selected.
• Move this light to the top right of the preview.

These lights have large highlights but only add subtle shading to the surface. We now have a nice smooth light over the entire object.

The environment settings for this material rely on a very dark colour given that we have such strong highlighting on the surface.

• Set the surface type to Plastic by clicking the Metal/Plastic button until it is set correctly.
• Using the Tint Color thumbnail, click and drag to select a very dark blue as your colour. This blue can be almost black selected from the blue region of the colour picker.
• Move the Mix Tinting Color slider to 100%.

This result gives you a material that does not show anything from underneath, and has a richer colour than if we'd used a light tinting colour.

In the Bump panel we can set up a dense bump to give the surface a lumpy look.

• From the Bump menu (below the Bump Preview) select the Perlin Noise type.
• Set the Bump Scale to -64% (this may vary depending on the size of your image, we want quite dense bumps at this point).
• Set the Bump Height to 21%.

The bumps break up the surface of the object and give it a more interesting look than the smooth material.

Strong diffuse lighting tends to reduce the feeling of depth in a bevel. However, this material uses Bump Map options to add more interest in. The extremely dark environment colour is a good way to let the highlighting and light settings create the material for you.