Hi all,
I haven’t fired up Carrara in somehting like over a year so I’m kind of rusty.

I needed to build a neon type sign for a project and am looking for a little help on the best way to texture parts of it. Basically the sign is a name made of metallic letters with the neon tube outlining the «letter-shape». Simple modelling job. Done that. Now I just want to give the letters a chrome type look to them.

I’m not building a whole scene here, and in a blank environment the chrome/metal texture has nothing to reflect in it. I thought I could use a displacement map to create the reflections in the texture, but I must not be doing it right, or just don’t properly understand the idea, because it isn’t working.

The completed image I’m shooting for here,  is going to be a close-up banner type image of the neon sign affixed to to the side of a building (not seeing much of the building, closely cropped image type of thing).

Hope I’m being intelligible in my explanation.
Any suggestions?

H&B

Hi H and B, Long time, no hassle. ;) From your Scene Settings, simply load in a picture to the Background. This will provide imagery for the chrome to reflect. And since you don't want that imagery to show in the background during the final render, choose a color in the Backdrop section of the Scene Settings as well. Mark

Excellent. That sounds remarkably simple. :o)

Thanks Mark.

H&B