Reflective Aluminum / Black Background

[broozee]

I'm trying to give my aluminum material build with multi-layer shader, a reflective surface. My background environment is in pure black.

 

When I render, my aluminum reflects the black, making look dirty and dark. Is there a way to keep the aluminum w/ black environment, while capturing some of the reflective properties of the material?

[broozee]

I just added more light and that seemed to do the trick.

[rodrigogua]

if you are using mental ray you can also use the environment/background switcher to have a background that renders black but a reflected environment that is something else (hdri, gradient map, etc)

 

you can also render with a given environment, save the render with alpha and change the background to black in post.

 

good luck