Hello,
I followed this fine tutorial from Pluralsight: “Introduction to Materials”.
The guy is using an older version of Houdini where he sets up a car paint shader. In the video, we see him set colors for reflections and coat. The problem is, I don't find these options in Hou 16.5. Any idea?
Thanks
Gz

To get a basic metallic car paint shader (sans any flake aspects):

With principled shader:
basecolor - desired car paint color
metallic - set to 1
roughness - set to 0.3-0.6
coat - set to 4.0 (4.0 is 100% don't ask me why)
coat roughness - set to 0 for glossy paint

For a standard non-metallic paint:
basecolor - paint color
metallic - 0
roughness - 0 for gloss
coat - 0

for more complex/view dependent affects, you can connect additional nodes to the basecolor input

There's also a carshadercore vop, that has flakes, but I don't think it's physically plausible.

Thanks for the car paint settings!!
Sorry i'm a newbie with shader creation. In the Mat context > principledshader node, if I connect some node into “reflect tint” and “coat” , will it color the reflection and coat?

Grendizer
Thanks for the car paint settings!!
Sorry i'm a newbie with shader creation. In the Mat context > principledshader node, if I connect some node into “reflect tint” and “coat” , will it color the reflection and coat?

The principled shader doesn't support a tinted coat specular, if that's what you are after. The reflect tint parameter is a scale that affects how tinted the base specular is by the base color. It is ignored when metallic is 100% since the specular is already fully tinted.

If you are feeling adventurous, you can build a material from the more atomic nodes that suites your needs better. Look for the nodes:
pbr diffuse, pbr metallic, pbr reflection, and pbr refraction. With them you can make pretty much any plausible material.

Thanks Jsmack