So far we have focused on sharp highlights and smooth surfaces. This material takes advantage of the lighting system to produce a surface that is not polished, and diffuses the light as it shines on it to create a more rubbery effect. The effect is driven almost entirely by the lights, so can be expanded in a number of ways using bump maps and other properties if needed.

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 Rubber 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 three 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 80%, 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 41%, the Highlight Sheen to 48%, 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.

• Add a new light using the Add Light button.
• Set the Light Brightness to 56%, the Highlight Sheen to 18%, and the Highlight Spread to 88%.
• 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.

These lights give us a nice smooth light over the surface of the material, with a strong hint of a highlight to the top right but no sharpness.

The environment settings for this material are very straightforward. First, we'll make sure that the colouring is right.

• 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 dark blue as your colour.
• Move the Mix Tinting Color slider to 100%.

The blue you select can be very dark, the lights we added were fairly strong. 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.

This material is extremely simple, and shows some of the depth of shading you can get on a diffuse material as opposed to the sharply highlighted ones that get used so often.