Hi All,

In Vue5i, how does one get exactly the same look of say one of the metal thumbnails of the procedural textures? Lets say I have an object and I would like to apply the "Steel Plate" texture. I would like to see this exact look when I render the scene. I have tried changing the scale and lighting and so many other parameters, but it does not give me ecaxtly the same look. I usually render in Preview or Final mode and it just looks like a dark gray color. Shoukdn't it look exactly like the thumbnails when rendered. I know that those thumbnails are probabely rendered with GI , but I really don't want to wait an hour or so to see a preview of the textures on my object. So is there some kind of a setting that would give you exactly the same look when rendered and if there is, I would really appreciate your input.

Thanks,

Nick

You may be having the same problem I've run into sometimes.  Open the metalic material in the material editor and reduce the amount of reflection. 

Uh, I'm not sure that this material's reflexion is too high... in the contrary, it seems very low to me, it's 30% only (hidden down inside the second underlying material inside transparency settings). This material simply IS dull grey. The bright effect in the preview seems to be mostly an extremely great highlight value, of more than 600 %. So, if the sun is not in the "right" position any more, no shiny any more, just dull grey... Left image : Steel plates as they come, right image : reflectivity of the last underlying mat set to 90% instead of 30%. I hope this helps. :-)

Looks like the problem varies from material to material.  I think it was the bronze material that caused me problems.  Its reflectivity was so high that, with the colour reflected light set to orange, the result was an almost black material in render.

Yes, :-) I remember that one... had some difficulties with it, too. Other than the bronze mat, this one uses overlays, three layers. We work with virtual light, which does not behave like real light (for example, try to decomopse white light into rainbow colours with a virtual glass prism :-) and with artificially constructed surfaces that do not behave physically correct, neither, so there is no "law of nature", no general rule which to follow. Everybody has his own way to construct atmosphere, lighting and materials. This variety is an advantage of Vue Inf, but on the other hand, that can create traps. I sometimes forget, that 3D is not physics, but is "just" enormous databases and a heluva calculus. Remembering when we did finite elements matrix iterations by hand, on paper, a dozen or more guys "assembled" to a human calculator array, tons of paper, I "forgive" some seem-to-be illogisms, just trace back the thing if I can, and give it the entry it likes better :-)

Thanks guys. I really appreciate that. Maybe I go to that reflection parameter and see if it works. What I am about to say might sound dumb, but wouldn't it be nice to have materials set so it generates exactly the same look as the thumbs regardless of where the sun or other light sources are. Yes I know it can't be, but wouldn't it be nice?!

Thanks again,

Nick