Trying something new I tried combining some macro photography with surface scanning. For this I used my old Nikon 105mm macro lens.
Here's what the image of the loonie or dollar coin looked like
I started using the images for the diffuse but notices it really wasn't adding much because so much detail was coming from the normal maps. Here's what the diffuse and normal for the Loonie ended up looking like
For the Diffuse I used the titanium substance material I got off substance source and added a grunge map of a different colour to break up the colour a bit. I also added a circular mask to mask out the background. Here's what the graph looks like
Here's what this ended up looking like in substance
and in Marmoset
Follow the link to see more renders and some video turntables in my portfolio
https://www.artstation.com/artwork/5kXgE
The quarter was pretty much the same process except I changed the metal node to a silver one, also there a few issues.
Because the silver quarter was still extremely shiny there the lights cast a hotspot line parallel to the light. I thought of trying to add something to dull the finish but because of the magnification anything I added would show up in the normal map.
Here's what the hot spots looked like and what they were doing to the normal map. You can see in the normal 2-3 bumps running across the coin.
Then I had the idea of just paining out the hot spots in lightroom because I wasn't using the image anyway. I ended up using adjustment brushes to painting some negative hightlights and exposure on the 8 images.
Here's the mask and the end result
and this was the final results
Here's what the diffuse and normal ended up being
and rendered in Marmo
Follow the link to see more renders and some video turntables in my portfolio
https://www.artstation.com/artwork/5kXgE
I have a few other coins to try and a few silver dollars, they are very old though so they have lost there shine which should help the process.
What I like about this is the look of the coin is totally adjustable since no image is used.
That's it for now. Thanks for reading.