6foot4arch Posted January 21, 2007 Share Posted January 21, 2007 Hello to everyone! This is my first post and I do so by recalling a similar experience with my first jump into online chatting around 15 years ago; believe it or not, I was apprehensive. Today I assuage apprehensiveness with desperation - how can I create convincing stainless steel in 3DMax?!?!?!? Placing photos of stainless steel into the diffuse channel of an anisotropic material and/or mixing about with the attenuated raytracing in the reflection slot, applying Fresnel falloff maps, bump maps, and specular maps, searching online tutorials, kicking the cat (joking), lost sleep (not joking), and blaming the computer, hasn't produced convincing results. I'm working with designers are expecting realism because they know it's possible but I'm still green and growing. Please, tell me your success stories surrounding the re-creation of stainless steel. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jophus14 Posted January 22, 2007 Share Posted January 22, 2007 Check this out. http://www.cgarchitect.com/resources/tutorials/smoke3d/tutorial5.asp Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
6foot4arch Posted January 22, 2007 Author Share Posted January 22, 2007 Thanks jophus. The link provided leads to new hope. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
6foot4arch Posted January 22, 2007 Author Share Posted January 22, 2007 I forgot to answer your question (which mysteriously doesn't appear when I view the thread with my browser but does appear in the corresponding email to my account) about what software I'm using. I'm using 3D Max ver 7 with it's scanline renderer. Plugins such as Vray and Mental Ray are alluring yet remain mostly unexplored by me. I have seen images from each in which stainless steel gleams with realism. Are these better options for producing realistic stainless steel I wonder. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
burreg Posted January 22, 2007 Share Posted January 22, 2007 Another option is Maxwell Render with the 3ds Max plugin. It has an easy-to-use material editor and can achieve very realistic results too. Have a look at these stainless steel materials: http://mxmgallery.maxwellrender.com/search.php?search=stainless%20steel&mode=0&id=227 These are free to download. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Arnold Gallardo Posted January 23, 2007 Share Posted January 23, 2007 you can try Darktree Simbiont: http://www.darksim.com/html/simbiontmax.html I have used Darktree for almost all my 3D applications. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mahorela Posted January 23, 2007 Share Posted January 23, 2007 convincing stainless steel with the scanline renderer can be a bitch. Basically a grey raytrace material (adjust reflection value to suit) will do it but the big problem with this is that the material needs something to reflect. Placing it in a white environment will not facilitate good reflection. The other variable to this is lighting, especially with scanline. It can make all the difference to the way reflective surfaces come across. Much easier to get good results out of MR or Vray. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
6foot4arch Posted January 24, 2007 Author Share Posted January 24, 2007 This is great! Many thanks to the responses. Certainly they have created more avenues of choice. It appears I should consider an addition to the tools I'm currently using plus a dose of good 'ol knowledge. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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