Hey all!

A while ago, I became fascinated by metal in anime. Now, I know what you're not thinking: "But you're such a metal head! You should know this by now!" - to which I don't say anything, since you weren't thinking that, BUT, I will tell you what I discovered and it blew my mind! Still picking up the pieces, lol.

So let's rewind the clock a smidge. The 80's was a glorious time for anime and we got some of the coolest robot sci-fi stuff, between Voltron, transformers and some of the mobile suite stuff, you could not be blamed if you got metal fatigue, LOL, that was just too easy.

That means, for most of what I can remember, metal has been a very integral part of anime and I really wanted to create some metal shaders in Blender Render and I started doing my research - yeah, it did not go well and this is where my mind got blown:

Yeah, that doesn't mean anything when you're trying to build a shader based on instinct! THERE IS NO SLIDER FOR INSTINCT! hahaha - it would be handy though!

Now, of course, you do find some Sakuga exceptions and with newer shows, the quality and detail went up, so you got more specularity, extra levels of reflective response and more steps on the diffuse part (which doesn't really exist on non-dielectric materials, but let's just go with the anime-ness of it for now).

The most notable examples of where metal is metal cause metal, is the first transformers series and even Turtles. Those early shows had VERY little to no shading. It was all solid colors, unless adding shadows helped tell the story - such as a character getting rim light because they got all up in your grill.

Check these frames out for example:

The Transformers (TV series) also sported that classic 80's chrome look! Love that!

Well, there must be something that indicated metal?

There was, but it wasn't obvious, and, like I mentioned, sometimes these things were shaded flatter than a pancake, because of budget and man power. There's a diffuse technique that seems influenced by Fresnel's research. Where the diffuse is sometimes broken up into spikes and shings, as I like to call them. These shings would help you see, "oh, this is metal and that's not", but again, you mostly knew metal, because it was metal. Context gave you meaning.

Let's look at April's news van for example:

In the above link, there are two images that illustrate my point perfectly. The top picture, where the van is by the river, you see NO indication that it is metal, other than you know it is, whereas in the second image, just a bit more down, you can clearly see a visual indicator that it is not only metal, but also quite reflective or shiny, also by definition making it metal.

As productions got easier and budgets got a little healthier, some fancier metal methods came to be. This might be in large part thanx to the voltron ('85) series and the mobile suit gundam series ('79) and probably even Evangelion (much later at '95) - which I still haven't seen, lol.

As you can see, you get varieties of techniques, but what has stuck, at least for Mobile Suit Gundam, is the diffuse technique - which was complimented with specular highlights in Evangelion.

There was another I'd love to use, that is far more accurate for my fav, but I can't seem to locate it again and I don't know what it's from. I just remember a metal face and that it may very well have been a VHS frame, lol.

You have to remember that when you build tools for a specific genre, there is a result you're aiming for, but that result needs to be dynamic, so you can almost throw anything at it, and it will still look great and that is what I aim to do - even if it does require a little animation on the part of the client - I want them to get the look they want, as plug and play as I can make it - and that's hard!

First, we have to break down the metal into it's elements as it pertains to anime in relation to what we'd like to keep, add or update and make it more current:

And this is where I stop for now and you guys kick in!

I've already started on my metal journey and hope to have a rocking shader up before the end of the week! I'd love to see what you guys cook up as well! Leave a comment on my social media posts - can't miss them, lol.

Hope you all have a super week and weekend!!!

GOD bless you!! (^^,)