Different textures on different surfaces of the same part

Using Creo and KeyShot

Sometimes you want to have different textures on different surfaces of the same part. For example, like in the case below, you have an injection molded plastic part with an offset logo where you want the countersunk area to shine, and the rest of the part to look rough.

In real life it can be done respectively by polish and etching the surfaces in the mold, and for concept presentation it can be done like this with Creo and KeyShot:

1.

Construct the model. In this case I did a text inside a countersunk circle.

2.

Select the surface that you want to have a different texture than the rest. Make sure it’s totally colored and not just outlined, or else you’ve not selected the surface correctly.

3.

Go to view -> appearance gallery and select a random color for the selected surface.

4.

We are done in Creo. Open KeyShot and import the part.

5.

Move and arrange the part to your likings.

6.

I image this to be an injection molded plastic part, and I therefore assign the big surface a hard rough black plastic material.

7.

For the countersunk area i choose a hard shiny black plastic material.

Actually we are done now, but as the look of reflective surfaces depends a lot of their surroundings, we can get the image to look a bit better in a few steps.

8.

Try to play around with the different hdri’s that comes with KeyShot. Rotate them, and the part, and watch closely how the light affects your object.

I ended up using the Light Tent Open Black 2 and rotated it until I had a nice reflection crossing the shiny circle. For the background i choose color and selected a very dark grey.

That’s it. Hope it was useful to you. Please comment and ask if I went too quick over some of the steps. I’ll be happy to elaborate.

Bonus

Without having colored the surfaces in different colors in Creo, we wouldn’t have been able to assign different textures to the different surfaces. To comparison, look at the images below, showing the part entirely shiny or entirely rough.