Attached Link: Gallery Image

Well, back to doing some technical tests. Anyway, this is a method for creating realistic metal hilights. You can start with any of the metalic presets in bryce, I just used one of my own but any of those will do (preferably the silverish collored ones or blotchy silver christmas balls if you want discoloration) Anyway, after looking at a few cut metal cups that were slightly brushed, I realized that light reflects off of these differently than it reflects off of glass. There appear to be long streams of light moving down the cup, using traditional methods for reflections, this is not possible in bryce (using standard lights) So, I just used the next logical (simple) solution. Build hilights using alpha planes. See next reply /

Although a small detail, these hilights bring out just a tiny more realism in a render. I made this one slightly painterly, but that was just for aesthetic purposes as the original was too plain. Ok, I placed this alpha plane slightly behind the camera and stretched it up a bit. (sure it's faking but so what) This needs to be re-positioned until you are happy with the reflection. Then comes the next step, radial scratches.

I created this scratch bump mat in photoshop, it's seamless so feel free to use it. The scratch mat was applied as a spherical map in my render, but feel free to experiment. This accentuates the hilights and adds to the realism (these type of hilights only appear in slightly radially scratched metals. Unless of course there's a giant tower of light...Then all metals do.. Turned the comments on in the image, I accidently put ratings on instead of comments. Why don't they just have comments checked by default?

thank you pal it is really useful!

EXCELLENT! what else to say?

Ditto what Pidjy said. Thanks Ornlu!

hmm..interesting, and helpful..I dunno..sometimes I'm most likely to want to respond to stuff that has the comments turned off..judging from other package galleries, that shall not be named..;) there's a lot of folks who have trouble even with constructive criticism..s'all politics..;) great idea.

Wonderful stuff, and thanks for the tut!

Cool tutorial Ornlu! That's a very realistic render. Thanks for the scratch bump.

Great render Ornlu and thanks for the bump, it should come in very useful in a suit of armour sort of way. 8) Catlin

Thanks for the info Ornlu, very useful stuff....and I also noticed the missing comments, guess I should check my gallery...;]

Nice job, Ornlu. Looks awesome. Question for you...what if you took that same object but changed the texture to make it look old and rusted? Sorry, my mind is just stuck in oil rig mode and I have rust and industrial textures on the brain. Thought that maybe it would look good with the discoloration on top, or is that the lighting effect?

Thanks for the bump file, Ornlu. I sure can use it.

Whats an alpha Plane? Other than its the First of planes, the plane that everyone wants to take. How do you make one?