Anisotropic brushed metal effect visible in the base of the pot
This short tutorial will show you how to create a realistic steel shader with anisotropic reflections to create a brushed metal effect on the base of a pot. Anisotropic reflections are based on the orientation of small grooves (bumps, fibers or scratches) that exist on a reflective surface. We will achieve this effect using a combination of a radial ramp connected to the anisotropy and a noise texture connected to the bump map attribute.
An example scene file can be downloaded here.
Assign standand_surface shader to base of pot
Now we are going to create the steel shader with the brushed metal effect.
You may notice faceting appears in specular highlights when using anisotropy. It is possible to remove the faceted appearance by enabling smooth_tangents for the Arnold attributes of the mesh . Take into account this requires a s ubdivision_iteration of at least one in the polymesh to work.
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No subdivision_iterations | subdivision_iterations: 1 | subdivision_iterations: 1 (smooth_tangents enabled) |
The Anisotropic direction is based on the UVs of the mesh you are using.
The Anisotropic brushed metal effect should now be visible at the base of the pot. However, it is lacking the bumped ridges associated with this effect.
RampRGB -> specular_anisotropy of standard_surface
Now we need to create a scratch effect and connect it to the bump attribute to achieve a subtle brushed metal effect. We can do this using the following shaders:
RampFloat -> Noise -> bump2d
You can create a scratch map in Photoshop and connect it to the bump attribute to achieve a subtle brushed metal effect.
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Noise filter in Photoshop | Twirl filter in Photoshop |
That concludes this short tutorial on how to create an anisotropic brushed metal shader.
Final shading network