Could someone please tell me how I can make an object's surface appear like Chrome / SIlver? I want it to look like this:

Notice the crisp edges within the reflection i.e. between the black, grey and white highlight. This is the kind of look I'm looking for. i have seen some other Chrome tutorials but they give a rather blurred chrome effect. If someone could please post a screenshot of their Material Room settings which would give the above Chrome effect, that would be superb! Thank you

Attached Link: http://www.runtimedna.com/forum/showthread.php?t=25885&highlight=chrome

Thank you "RedPhantom" for the link. It is an interesting tutorila but not quite what I'm looking for. The tutorial is mainly about object reflecting other objects within the workspace. I'm looking for Material Room settings which will give a Chrome effect even when there aren't any other objects in the workspace.

But look at the picture you showed, azim. Look at it closely.

It reflects the floor under the chrome prop. It reflects its own shadow on that floor. The two pieces reflect each other.

You mistake the importance of this if you want  to fake the reflections. It will not look like chrome if you fake the environment and it doesn't even show the object it rests on.

In the image you posted, the creator has placed a couple of bright white self-lit rectangles in the scene, something to look at in the chrome piece.

Why do you want to fake that? Is this for a single render that you'll never use the piece again? Or is it for general use? If it is the latter, then any fakery you do will be extremely obvious.

Let me put it another way.

You cannot see chrome. When you look at a perfect chrome object, it is invisible. All you see is the reflections of the things around it.

The material is a Reflection node, with Reflection_Value at 85%. This is perfect chrome. (Nothing in the ordinary world is 100% reflective. In physics labs, you may find more than 85% reflectivity, but not ordinary objects.)

The white parts are self-lit cylinders placed to the left and right of the subjects.

Look inside the chrome - what do you see?

I made a reflection map that is sort of like the actual scene.

But it is impossible in this map to capture the shadow correctly.

It is impossible in this map to capture the change in perspective when you move a prop. Look at the two spheres here. Do you see how the white box reflection is identical? But look at the true reflections I posted earlier. The sphere in the back left has a different perspective due to position, so that the left-most white prop is larger, and on the rightmost prop, the right white box is larger.

And in addition to the incorrect reflection of shadows and the incorrect perspective, I do not see the objects reflecting each other!

And if I were to change the ground color or the light color at all, this would become even more ugly.

Thank you "bagginsbill" for your superb explanation. Now I have a much better understanding of the Chrome behaviour. Could you please post a screenshot of the Material Room for the first (or second) image. That way, I can understand better how to change my settings. Also what do "self-lit cylinders" mean and how can I create them? Thank you so much.

in addition, uncheck "refl_lite_mult" in shader. sum of reflection + specular + diffuse <= 1.0, e.g.
bill may be referring to cylinders whose posersurface has one of the light-emitting channels non-zero, with IDL checked.

Yes, and can you show the settings for that very nice tile floor???? Thanks!

tomorrow, after I am over my drunken.

Had a tooth pulled today. Ouch.

Quote - tomorrow, after I am over my drunken.

Had a tooth pulled today. Ouch.

I was last week.

Not much fun drinking Bloody (tasting)  whiskey  !

You got that right, Noel.

I hope the tooth problem alleviates.
I did notice how the spiritous liquors allowed you to mellow out a bit there ;-)

Bill, in your tiled floor picture, I noticed that the specular (I think) highlights on the top of the reflective surfaces got more pronounced and match the floor's color.    Was that supposed to happen?  I'm guess yes but I'm not sure what's going on.

A quickie :-)

Great tuts and info...

Oil of cloves for tooty achy's

Okay, so why do add freshnel to a reflective material?  I thought it is use for certain types of transparencies.

How does one go about creating a "self-lit cylinder" as mentioned by "bagginsbill"??

One way is to go into the material room and put a color in the ambient color node and set it's value to something greater than zero (ie white and 1).

It's preferable to use alt_diffuse it cause less artifact !

Examples later !