Industrial Design Surface Finishes

[explicithistory]

Hey Coronauts,

I am still in my early days of learning Corona, so please bear with me :)
As I am studying industrial design and focus on product visualisation. I am often in the situation of having to create surface finishes on CAD Models of consumer electronics in a real life scale.

I was wondering if some of you can explain to me how I can create surfaces that have tiny roughness details like on the attached picture? Something like powder coated metal or brushed Aluminium would be interesting too.
 
Preferably I would like to achieve this procedurally with noise so I dont have to worry about the projection mapping. Sometimes I am lucky and just putting a noise into the bump channel does the trick, but it falls apart on close ups most of the time.

And here comes my second question... How do I set up those procedural Materials so that they dont show seams where two texture map directions meet like on the edge of the cubic mapping.
Is triplanar the way to go or do I have to change something inside the noise?

I would be really happy if one of you can explain that to me, thanks!

Happy Easter to you all :)

[Nejc Kilar]

I'd probably start with a bump map or a normal map cranked up to some pretty strong values and take it from there. I'd probably give it a blended material so that the base drives that broader reflection highlight that is more plastic like and then a slightly more glossy one on top.

Typically though, I think Corona somewhat struggles with these types of effects for some reason. You can do it but I think you need to spend a bit more time with it. I think having proper normal / bump maps will be crucial - I'd recommend looking into the 3DCollective surface imperfection map pack, I think they might have some really usable ones (If I recall correctly they are labeled as "other" maps and not "dirt" maps in their surface imperfection pack.).

As for keeping the thing procedural... If I recall correctly you are a C4D user, right? If so, then I would advise against going with the built in noises for bump map effects because they act unreliably and are still buggy. I think you should totally get away with triplanar mapping on this one, its not like it needs to be perfectly UV mapped from the looks of it.

Hope that the above at least somewhat helps :\

[explicithistory]

Hey thank you for your advise!
I just fiddled around a little on the weekend and got quite decent results I am happy with. Triplanar worked well after I figured out that the Triplanar Scale doesnt affect the size of the bump. I did use C4D noises. Had to set the scale inside there. They are a pain to set up and small value changes can break the whole thing but once I found a setting thats worked it looked alright. I hope they will stand the test during animation and wont flicker or something.
I will have another look at the surface imperfections pack, thanks!