Render · Automation

Custom Bead Materials

A jewellery client sells wristbands whose beads customers choose in a 3D configurator on their store: pick a mineral, and see it rendered on the band in real time. They asked us to reproduce their real stone beads as digital materials, matched closely enough to sit convincingly beside their own product photography.

3DInteractive model · drag to rotate
Drag to rotate

Base meshes

We started from a simple sphere for the smooth beads, and modelled a separate volcanic-rock sphere with real surface geometry where a stone needed genuine depth and unevenness rather than a painted-on look.

Matching real stone

The client sent product photographs from their own shoot and asked us to match the materials exactly: colour, reflectivity, depth, shimmer, and the small imperfections that make a mineral look real. We built every material in Blender's shader editor from procedural nodes, so it holds up at any scale with no baked textures.

Malachite Bead

Photoreal render of a malachite bead with green banded swirls and a central drill hole
Render
Photograph of the real malachite bead with green concentric banding, used as reference
Original

Marble Jasper Bead

Photoreal render of a black-and-white marbled jasper bead
Render
Photograph of the real marbled jasper bead in grey and white
Original

Jasper Bead

Photoreal render of a tan, speckled jasper bead
Render
Photograph of the real jasper bead with orange and brown mottling
Original

Volcanic Rock Bead

Photoreal render of a rough black volcanic-rock bead with a pitted surface
Render
Photograph of the real volcanic-rock bead with a dark, pitted surface
Original

Into the store

The finished models and materials drop straight into the client's web configurator, so a shopper can compare minerals on their own band and see an accurate, real-time render before they buy. Drag the model above to see one of the beads up close.

Services used

  • Procedural material authoring (Blender)
  • Reference-matched look-dev
  • Real-geometry base modelling
  • Web and configurator-ready asset export

Deliverables

  • Bead material library
  • Smooth and volcanic base meshes
  • Configurator-ready 3D assets
Notable technical detail. Procedural, node-based materials, rather than photographed textures, mean each bead stays crisp at any zoom level in the configurator and can be adjusted without re-shooting.
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