How to Create Translucent Plastic

This guide shows you how to set up a material so that it renders a translucent, colored plastic.

Overview

Plastic materials can vary from translucent to opaque; they can be glossy or frosted. In this tutorial, we will be creating a colored, translucent, and slightly glossy plastic with the V-Ray FastSSS 2 Material. The material is applied to a laundry basket that is modeled in Blender.

Download the scene to follow along

This scene is made with V-Ray 7 hotfix 2, in Blender 4.3.

Steps

1 Initial Setup

First, let's choose the camera that focuses on the laundry basket. Go to the Outliner and find the Cameras collection. There you will find the Plastic_Camera. Click on the green Camera icon next to its name ( ) to set it as the render camera. You should also see the basket come into focus in the viewport. The camera has its properties preset for the scene. You can explore its settings from the Camera Properties (Data Properties when selecting a different object).

Then, select the Laundry_Basket geometry from the viewport. Set the bottom editor to the V-Ray Node Editor. Then, make sure the editor is adjusted to the Shader Node Tree. You can now see the Plastic_Pink_Translucent_Mtl in the editor.

2 Create the Material

At the beginning, a V-Ray Mtl is applied to the geometry. Create a Fast SSS2 Mtl by searching for it from the Add menu (Shift + A). Connect the FastSSS2 to the Material Output.

3 Material Properties

Open the properties of the FastSSS2 material. Set the following properties for the Diffuse and SSS layer:

• We want the plastic to have a pinkish hue. Set the Diffuse Color to HSV = 0.830, 0.483, 0.207
• Set the Sub-surface Color to HSV = 0.873, 0.318, 0.485
• Set the Scatter Color to HSV = 0.986, 0.302, 0.610
• Reduce the Scatter Radius (cm) to 1.000. This reduces the light scattering within the object and makes the laundry basket look more opaque.

In the Specular layer rollout, set the Specular Glossiness to 0.750

4 Final Render

Those are all the needed settings! You can render the scene and see the final result.
The render settings are preset; you can view them in the Render Properties tab. The Image Sampler is one of the most crucial factors for the noise and quality of any render, so if anything, check its settings.

You can start a Production render from the Render button at the top of the Settings.

Here is the final render. Some post-effects are applied; you can set your settings and effects from the Layers tab of the VFB.
You can now apply these settings to any material, and it will render a material with metallic reflections.