Making metal can seem difficult, especially to get a realistsic look. But when you start to get the idea of using the different abilities of the Materials Lab, you'll be on your way. This is a quick and easy way I have of putting a more real world look to the old reflective chrome. To speed things up, I'm just using a picture texture to drive not only the Bump channel, but also the Specularity and (especially) the Diffusion and Reflection channel. Fast Directions; Basically, take a sphere, put the "Mirror" material on it, then using the metal picture texture provided below, make your Materials Lab match the screen shot shown (also below). The one thing you can't see in the screen shot is I changed my Specular Halo to Red, Green, and Blue all equal 230. That's it, lol...now to explain a little; -Diffusion; This will help sell that picture texture that's wrapped around your sphere. Very basically, it controls the brightness/darkness of the texture, using the pic texture for the Diffusion here makes a BIG difference in the look of the metal. *Once you place the Diffusion bead into the A channel, it doesn't matter if your Diffusion value is at 0 or a 100, as the pic texture is now completely driving the Diffusion alone. Not all material attributes do this, Specularity also does, but Reflection does not. -Bump; you all know what that is and does. -Specularity; Using the pic texture will cause lighter areas to be more specular, and darker areas of the picture less, this will look more realistic, because if you were looking at say, an old ball bearing, the darker stained areas of the ball would absorb more light, thus less would be reflected back, and you would see less specularity. -Reflection; Ah, this is the other big one. Placing the Reflection bead into the A channel will radically change your material. It will look very dark, and the Reflection value will have to be taken up. Reflection will use the pic texture to make lighter areas more reflective and darker areas less reflective. NOTES! - Experiment with various different pic textures. You don't have to use a pic texture of metal, I found that pics of dirty surfaces work well as do pics of concrete. Use pics you wouldn't think of using, they can produce some intersting results, as can using more than one pic texture in combination. And, don't forget, you don't have to use a picture, Bryce's DTE Mat's work well also! That's basically it, if I missed/messed anything or have any questions, just type away. AgentSmith

Picture texture.

Materials Lab Screen Shot. Remember - Experiment! AS

thanks AS! some excellent tips in there!

Thanks, AS. One can never have enough mats...

Cool!!! Thank you very much! You should add this thread to the resources for the community! Here's my quick excercise.

Thank you for the mini tut...:)

Neat and instructive! thanks!

That's great, thanks.

Cool, AgentS, thanx a lot. Above is the same technique with random mapping instead of spherical. Could give some interesting results. S.

Thankyou so much, been trying to find a good metal texture like this for ages. Going to use it in my next render for testing HDRI.

Excellent tutorial. Thanx !!

Thank you AS! This helps me get a better grasp of the functions and the possibilites of the materials editor. Too bad we can't use picts or bitmaps in this month's material challenge.

Yeah, I just used a pic texture, `cause it's faster to explain. But, all you have to do is pic a Bryce DTE mat, and then work backwards to match the Mat Lab screen shot, and work from there. DTE Mats can look awesome. AS