Need help making my metal shiny.

[stayinwonderland]

I've always sucked at pulling of a good metal finish, so I need some help from the pros.

 

*might want to view these images full size

 

Here's my current render state (it's the bar counter we're addressing and it needs to look like shiny zinc):

 

 

Here's the result I'm after:

 

 

Here's my material set up (maybe view full size):

 

 

and here's my scene/lights set-up (I've cut away some of the bar so you can see the lights that are in and round the shelves). Blue arrow indicates a large plane light representing outside night light. This kind of thing is probably important in terms of shiny reflections:

 

 

So I need:

 

- General tips on how to make this look more like zinc (zinc counter tops are a common look in modern design, so it's fairly ubiquitous).

- How to make it more shiny in the absence of lights, maybe how to fake it? It needs to be reflecting something.

 

 

THANKS IN ADVANCE!

Edited September 25, 2013 by stayinwonderland

[christofferthulin]

I would like you to play with the reflection fresnel turned ON and a value around perhaps 10-20. I think your counter is too reflective on every side to appear realistic.

 

Try mixing the diffuse map with the reflection map in the reflection slot, as the diffuse texture clearly has some reflection already in it.

 

I could see you mixing in another texture in the bump slot as well. The counter you want to illustrate has a variated smooth bump surface.

 

The counter needs to reflect more yellowish light. One way to fake this is to make the reflection color hue a bit more yellow. Perhaps this will fix itself when you turn on fresnel reflections?

 

Hope I make any sense.

[stayinwonderland]

I went to vray-materials.de and found a brushed metal. Pretty basic but the more I look at zinc, the more it looks like brushed metal.

 

Turned up the fresnel IOR to 20 and here's what I got:

 

 

Not sure what the client will say though.

 

What I had to do was place lots of lights around it that aren't visible (but ARE visible to reflections) and also don't affect diffuse. They're also set to exclude everything except that counter top.... please tell me this is a normal thing to do? It seems strange to do this just to get metal to shine.

 

Edit: I already know what the client will say. I think he wants the metal to look SUPER brushed like in the reference pic but I have no idea how to do that... !?

[Francisco Penaloza]

Hi, That photo reference looks more like brushed Stainless Steel than Zinc.

any ways, the last rendering looks closer to what you are looking for. For these type of metals I usually don't use fresnel values (yes someone in Chaos group will scream now ) but Metals have such high IOR that for rendering seems to work fine just turning it off and change the BRDF to ward.

So what you can try is use your diffuse image or something similar to the patterns of your reference photo in the reflection channel, set the base color to medium gray, then add other stressed metal image to the Ref. glossiness channel. put the diffuse color to dark gray almost black(no texture need it really). this will give you a very reflective metal with strong glossy(blurry) reflections, then you can adjust this intensity with the bitmap transparency. on the material scroll down to the Maps section and adjust your reflection bitmap and glossiness to a value of 20 more or less.

The bitmap on the reflection will give you those irregularity on the reflections and the other map on the glossiness make it not even.

 

this should work fine. if you need more complex metal you may need to use VRay blend materials and combine 2 or more metal materials, sometimes you create one stressed metal as base and then you put a glossy/reflective on top as a coat(like very polished stainless steel) elevator doors or such.

Putting lights to accent reflections and glossiness is not a crime, photographers do it all the time

[Scott Schroeder]

Don't forget to toy with adding in a swirly map to the anisotropy and anisotropic rotation slots. In reality, that's what this metal is doing. It's swirling the highlights and reflections since the mental was brushed with a circular tool. A VrayBlend map is almost essential for this material. You get your base stainless set up and add on a clear coat for nice crisp reflections.

 

A 1 minute test set up using BBB3 test scene.

 

 

Some good links:

http://bertrand-benoit.com/blog/2013/05/26/materialism-1-5-rough-metal/

http://bertrand-benoit.com/blog/2012/04/15/materialism-1/

http://www.neilblevins.com/cg_education/flat_metallic_surfaces/flat_metallic_surfaces.htm

[stayinwonderland]

Sorry to not get back quick enough... it seems I'm already way ahead (or just about ahead) of the suggestions, lol. Thanks for everyone's input though!

 

Here's my latest render:

 

 

Took me ages to realise that it was an issue with anisotropy - which I'm totally new to.

 

But, Scott, do you think this works? or do the anisotropy tiles look too... tiling? (this isn't using vray blend by the way, still think it needs it?)

[Scott Schroeder]

It depends on the metal really. Sometimes they'll put a clear coat on to protect it and give it a high gloss, other times it's just the bare metal so it won't have such crisp reflections.

 

You have the right concept, but it is too tiling and too machine perfect. Think as if someone put those scratches there by hand and that's what you need to shoot for. Try taking your metal swirl map, make a copy, and comp them together using a VrayComp texture. Set one of them to tile less and rotate it about 25-50 degrees. This should introduce some randomness in that texture. You could also create a new one in Photoshop to further introduce some randomness.

 

In my material set up, the anisotropic rotation was set to about 5-10% strength.

Edited September 25, 2013 by VelvetElvis

[stayinwonderland]

Yeah, good point. I suspected it looked too tiling.

 

So, I don't suppose you could give me a run down of how you made that?

 

Mine was downloaded from vray-materials.de and has a concentric cirles map in diffuse, annistropy and an. rotation. Under BDRF annistropy is set to .65

 

I don't have a tiling stainless swirls texture is the other major drawback here :/

[Scott Schroeder]

Here's a screencap of the material settings.

[stayinwonderland]

Hmmm, gonna have to pass on that. Literally can not find a seamless brushed metal texture anywhere on the web.

 

Cheers though.

[Francisco Penaloza]

I think if you mix some of these you can get a pretty close result. Do not give up yet

google

 

[stayinwonderland]

My that's a mighty fine texture! did you do that? and if so was it by mixing textures together in photoshop?

[Francisco Penaloza]

Yes it is two textures, mixed up and then mixed up in photoshop very quick and then within max mixed with a noise map.

Not always you'll find the right texture right away just look for what it is close enough then fine tune in photoshop. here is the texture and the material setup.

Now still this texture need more variance, I noticed still some tiling but it depend of the scale, but is a good start for you

[stayinwonderland]

Thanks for the info. Here's my latest attempt:

 

 

Spent ages trying to get this right. Not perfect but I managed to make my own seamless tile from a very loose and messy brushed steel image and mixed it in 3ds max with a very tight, seamless concentric circles map. The latter was faded right down so it just comes through here and there.

 

Hardest part is trouble shooting because if I isolate the bar (hide everything else) and tweak using vray RT then I can't appreciate what the metal will eventually reflect. So it's not until I unhide everything and render using the final camera view that I know whether it's worked. Bit exhausting and time consuming.

 

Thanks for everyone's input!

[Scott Schroeder]

I think you did a great job with that metal material. It reads like the reference picture now.

 

When I have to create a complex material, I usually do it in the BBB3 test scene so it renders quickly and I can tweak things quickly. That usually gets you into the 95% range when going into your final scene.

[Francisco Penaloza]

Yes that's is looking very good!

When I have complex reflective or glossy materials I also test render in a separate scene or I hide everything but a simple mesh with an HDRI light, like the sample I posted early, so I can see reflections and glossy effects faster.

Your scene is looking great. Other option so accentuate the glossy areas in your counter if you don't want to use extra lights, is to use dodge tool in photoshop, brush over the accent areas with a soft brush it give you the same effect.

Dot forget you check sub-pixel mapping to avoid those sparkle dots