Rendering Stainless Steel

[mesht]

i seem to have this problem of rendering a convincing stainless steel material in my scenes. i use the max's architectural materials and rendered using mental ray, but it turns out very dark grey.

 

i also have use a preset steel material, and still doesn't look like a brushed stainless steel. could it be with the materials setting?

[Tim Nelson]

It could be either the settings or the reflection environment. Without anything to reflect, stainless steel will be nothing but a flat shade of gray.

 

What works best for me is the have a very high anistropy, either vertically or horizontally, and a very sharp reflection value to get those nice streaky highlights you seen in the real world. I also sometimes use a small wave bump amount to give a little variation to the reflections.

[luckytohaveher]

I had the same problem a couple of years ago.

 

Create a light grey metal material, start with a max standard if you like.

 

Use a noise map for diffuse, specular, ambient, and bump with a setting of about 30 or so for the bump value. For the noise map place the 'levels' setting at about 2-3. Then make the mapping 1 tile in the x direction and 4 to 6 in the y direction.

 

That should do it. It is the 6 to 1 aspect ratio that will make it look good. If you really want to get tricky use the same map for the reflection map with a value of 20-40 (if you have the time)...

 

Good day.

[mesht]

thanks guys for your tips

 

see how it goes