How to make a slightly transparent plastic material?

Support Materials and Textures
1

Hello, I’mm modeling the Skullcandy Aviator Headphones and am not the best at materials, wondering how can i make this sort of transparent glossy plastic on the back of the ear cups. The actual color is black, despite what this image may suggest.

Side.jpg984×2300 121 KB

Thanks in advance for the help!

2

In which render engine (Cycles or BI)?

3

In Cycles - i’d do the following.

  1. Add a Mix shader and set the Fac value to 0.1
  2. Add a glass shader - plug it into the top node of the mix shader.
  3. Set the glass material to have a roughness of 0.05 - leave the IOR as is - its probably ok for plastic.
  4. Add a Translucent shader and plug it into the bottom node of the mix shader.

That should get you pretty close - then just tweak the colours/values to suit your requirements.

Remember to make your “plastic” cover object have thickness - otherwise it won’t look right.

4

Moony, using your setup, how would you add a texture image to the “plastic”. Sort of like those emergency exit signs, where the light is inside a case and the front panel is image? Something like this: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/eb/Exit_light_sign.JPG

5

The simplest way would be to plug an image texture node* into the colour slot of the glass shader - and just use an image that looks like the sign you want.

*You may also need to use the texture coordinate node before the image texture if you are going to key off the UV unwrap.

6

Sometimes the simples solutions are the easiest. I was completely overcomplicating it.
Thanks Moony!