Now a close up of the outer support shows this little touch with the use of fractal noise:

These are Dave words from the book:

"Normally a surface like this would make the use of a procedural texture nearly impossible, but this surface has an Incline towards the centre, which opens up a couple of possibilities. The first possibility is that we can use that incline to "bend" a procedural texture to follow the curve of the surface.

Click the Bump map button and select Fractal Bumps as the texture. The angle of the polygons on this surface give it a thickness of 4.5mm on the Z axis, which isn't much but a texture map with a small size on the Z axis would appear to stretch outward across the width of this ring. To see this demonstrated give the texture a value of 10mm on the X and Y axis and a much smaller size of 0.01mm on the z axis. Increase the texture amplitude to 100% and click use texture.

Another technique is to apply an image to this surface and have that image bend to conform to this curve as well. In this case we can add a latitude scale, using a simple image, and have the surface bend it around in an arc for use.

Click the texture button for the diffuse channel then click add texture to create a second texture layer. Change this to a cylindrical Image map and then click the texture image button. Load the scale image (horizontal image like a ruler) - Select this as the alpha image and click auto sizing - also activate negative alpha. Then make sure the texture centre values are 0 respectively but leavethe Z value alone. Then make the map apply along the z axis.

We now have a scale that wraps around the curved surface although the image is straight and flat."

So how do we apply that to a watch bezel? - - well most watch bezels are rarely completely flat are they!? <wink>

I've taken the surface - removed the maps changed the colour and applied to a simple bezel with a top taper.

Result number 1 quickly messing about comes up with this - a rough machined finish

next I reduced the texture amplitude to roughly 20% to give a smoother more polished look

Then I messed with the seemingly flat face plate - ensure that the polygons look like this - which is why the lathe operation is the best for things like this:

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