Damascus Steel

I covet one of these blades, the pattern on it is gorgeous and if you can get a real blade then it is incredibly durable. That seems to be the problem though - getting a real Damascus blade. Note that mokume gane and Damascus are different; mokume gane contains many different metals whereas Damascus contains steel. It seems the proper art of forging the wootz steel with a high carbon content. This process is very picky though, too little carbon content and the metal becomes wrought iron, too much and it becomes cast iron. The heat must be kept constantly at the right temperature to ensure that the steel does not become cementite, which is extremely fragile plate iron. It seems much easier to create a blade of this durability without the pattern welding element. Word of warning to those who would go to renaissance faires and buy a blade: these patterns are generally soft so make the vendor demonstrate it first. Unless it's Angel Sword, then that's fine.

However this is CG so we can do whatever we want!!

This will be a base element like the tiles, rather than an additive process like the water stains or moss. I need to add that into the shader so that one cannot pick tiles and Damascus.

Elements of damascus:

• Concentric swirls
• Two colors
• High spec on one, lower on other
• Need ability for displacement
• Base for wood as well
  

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I like the way this is going, I want to add some more presets in the form of buttons that interactively change the settings on the noise patterns in order to give the user better jumping off points. The defaults are set to create the above images (not the concentric variations, hence the title of "variation"), but I don't think that it's enough. I have covered the scope of my reference images however, but I'd like to find more of a happy medium that has the lines and the concentric circles.