---
title: "Hippie Dragon Shading"
canonical: "https://rmanwiki-27.pixar.com/space/RU/656834683/Hippie%20Dragon%20Shading"
format: markdown
---
### Shading

To make this asset look convincing, I was required to work with a lot of different materials but I did not have different geometries to assign these materials to. All the different materials needed to combine under a single master shader so I thought the best approach for this kind of an asset would be layer shading using "PxrLayerMixer" and "PxrLayer" nodes to separate these different properties and use masks for a smooth transition between materials.

I had separate shader control for different areas of the body like the Petals, Leaves, Feet, area around the Eyes, Belly, Neck, Antenna, Tongue, Mouth etc.


![image16.png](media://dd62448e-d6c3-4fc5-8d81-d95c45b20f89)

![image4.jpg](media://948716c8-ec88-4664-8662-6da3a5c17387)

##### Petals

The lookdev for petals was one of the more crucial materials because it had to look thin and also transmit light the way flower petals do. Initially I tried to achieve the look through SSS with the help of a mask.

However, I was not satisfied with these results as the petals started to look more like wax, and the bright backlit tint was missing. To overcome this, I thought of a different approach where I combined Transmission using the Glass parameter along with SSS. To gain extra control, I used PxrRemap and PxrColorCorrect nodes.

![image6.jpg](media://a2580b3e-a0cc-4a93-9819-e9910872e5b1)

![image3.png](media://3989a4b3-5533-401b-ba3b-acc419aa2387)

##### Leaves

The geometry of the leaves is slightly thicker than the Petals so unlike the material for the petals, I did not need to use the transmission to get the backlit look similar to the petal. This is the result I got just using the SSS parameter.


##### Eyes

I noticed in a lot of references that the eyes of frogs and some other reptiles have a metallic look. There are also gold foil-like flakes on some of them. I found it interesting and tried to achieve a similar look in Hippie’s eyes.

For the Iris and Sclera, I used both SSS and Specular Edge Color. For the metallic look, I increased the IOR slightly. This gave me that semi metallic look. Although the eye has that metallic shine but still it’s not really a true metal. In the end, it’s an organic material so instead of letting just the Specularity drive the color, I had combined it with subsurface to get some contribution from SSS as well.

For the golden flakes, I initially started off with just Specular Edge Color and cranked up the IOR to a much higher value to give it a pure metallic look. However, It would look almost black in the areas where little to no light hit. So ultimately, I stuck to the same approach as the rest of the eye but I kept the IOR higher that helped me get the shine similar to golden foil that I was going for.

![image10.jpg](media://0056ba2c-e900-4e30-8da8-6d169f5cb24d)

> Macro (widget)