First, I have looked for this in the Material Room thread but can't find what I'm looking for.

Second, what I'm after is not the usual reflective, polished look, more the slightly grubby, not very reflective but somehow shiny and, erm, metallic look of steel.  That's steel as you'd see it in industry, rather than in consumer goods.

So far all my attempts are absolute bobbins, so help would be gratefully received.

BTW, I use P6.

I don't know if this will help you, Sam.  This is link to an RDNA post I came across some time ago concerning heavy metal shaders.  BB responded to this, so it may give you some ideas.

http://www.runtimedna.com/forum/showthread.php?49034-Help-me-to-build-very-heavy-iron-and-other-metals

Looks perfect.  Many thanks. 

I believe those are his Heavy Metal Shaders. If you need, I have the zip file.

Quote - I believe those are his Heavy Metal Shaders. If you need, I have the zip file.

Thank you for the offer.  If redistribution is allowed, then by all means I will have them.  I'll PM my email addy.

I sent the file.  Yesterday there was someone over at RuntimeDNA looking for the zip of the old Sword Materials that BB had attached there. The attachment is now gone and he doesn't keep a folder of the stuff he has published. I've been grabbing just about everything I could find that he's published so I re-uploaded it. BB was glad that I had it to re-upload, so I don't think there is a problem with redistribution on his end. I've been meaning to bring it up for discussion of those of us who have diligently been saving his published works make some sort of public archive of his scripts or material files.

That would seem like an excellent idea.  Heaven knows how many of those files have passed into oblivion.

Maybe if those of us who have been saving his published works could compare notes maybe we can come up with most of them. I've also saved some screen shots for simple shaders that he posted for people to build it from. I would also consider those as published works as well. I don't have the ability to set up such an archive tho. I do have a treasured back up folder of his scripts and materials to contribute from.

RDNA had a bunch of metal shaders by Ajax and Traveller in their freestuff. 

@**Latexluv - If this ever gets done, please post here. I've tried following some of the topics in the Node Cult over at RDNA, but with the server switch, lots of things are missing from posts over there. I'd love to get some of the things I keep seeing described, but can't view.

Can't wait until BB gets his book out...**

I've tried to use this shader but I believe I need some help/advice in getting the best from it.

Can anyone tell me how to set it up to get a not very reflective looking steel?

Attached Link: Car Materials

(click to enlarge image)

I think what you may need is this product. Here is a link to the free version which contains a shader called alloy, which you can see on the wheels of the car. By darkening the grey in the shader slightly I think you will get that steel look.

Many thanks, Helgard.

I have that shader pack - and will buy the full version when funds allow.  I never thought to use that particular one.  Thanks for the heads up.

Hi.

Soft reflections are very difficult to do in Poser, and even if suitable settings can be found to get the effect you want, you pay the price in rendering speed. I have experimented with the Reflection node "Softness" and "Quality" for years and can only get a moderate amount of spread before it breaks up into obvious discrete samples. And until I got my 8-thread I7 860 processor with 8 GB of RAM, the render times were simply intolerable. I suppose a 30 hour render could produce decent results, but I was never able to finish enough experiments to find great settings. Now that I have the I7, I am able to do more tests in less time. But the outcome is often not what I want anyway. I see much better soft reflections coming out of my LuxRender images.

Anyway, if you have a mind to do this sort of metal in Firefly, you have two choices. Either try to use the reflect node, or don't. The most dominant effect comes from the specular anyway.

The key to a soft-finish metal is a bright and wide specular effect, with very little diffuse.

Also worth noting (and not because I insist, but rather because it simply makes a difference that you have to deal with) is that gamma correction matters. If you tune a non-GC shader for good results while rendering without GC (i.e. not in Poser Pro), you'll find that if you change the lighting more than a little, the effect breaks down and you have to tune the shader again.

I am preparing a demonstration.

Thanks, BB.  No, I don't have Poser Pro.  Still with P6 here. 

The key elements are that the diffuse color and specular color are the same - white. When doing colored metals you may choose a different color, but the two should be about the same.

The diffuse value is low - 10%. The specular value is high - 100%.

And the highlight size is big. Here it is .4. I will render some spheres with various values of highlight size so you get a feel for it.

Left to right it is .1, .2, .3, and .4.

This is rendered with GC and IDL. In Poser 6 you have neither. So you will have to fudge. You will need an IBL and you may need to adjust the diffuse value, specular value, and highlight size to get similar results.

Then I add a Reflect node, with a reflection value of .8.

This is a pretty shiny material.

Try rendering something with that - it will look like chrome.

I increased the Quality here from the default of .2 to .4. This is not really required for a sharp reflector like this, but when I grabbed it I was trying to get rid of some jaggies.

I change the Reflect Softness to 1. I will be showing various values of the Reflect Quality in the next post.

The Quality left to right is .2, .5, 1, and 2.

There is no real difference between 1 and 2. I was hoping it was one of those parameters than can be pushed but it isn't.

Anyway, it's obvious that the results are unacceptable with quality = .2. At .5 it is still not great, but you might get away with that when mixing it with more specular and diffuse. At 1 it is decent, but very slow.

This render took about 9 minutes on my I7. On my previous computer it would have been 3 hours.

Left to right, the highlight size is .1, .2, .3, and .4.

I change the shader to this.

The diffuse color is a light bluish gray.

Highlight size is .25.

The reflector is adjusted slightly less soft and slight less quality. Trying to get some speed here. The reflection value is increased to .2.

The first Andy does not have a reflect node - just the broad specular. That is, the shader in the previous post with the Reflect node deleted.

The second Andy and the cylinder in front of him have the shader in the previous post.

The third Andy and the second cylinder have the bright chrome-like material for comparison.

This is with GC and IDL.

Here are the same shaders rendered with HSV ETM and IDL.

Tone mapping has a job that relates to how to deal with colors that are brighter than the maximum displayable value of a monitor. When it performs the adjustment, it decreases the luminance of these values - compressing the dynamic range. But it also has the side effect of increasing the luminance of dark pixels. This is directionally correct with regard to a gamma compensation, but it is not the same. However, in a pinch it can help.

Clearly the darker pixels are very much too dark, and the metallic effect is changing drastically.

Much faffing would be needed to compensate.

Bloody marvellous, BB.  Many thanks for this. 

This is without any gamma compensation (no GC nor HSV ETM) and also without any sort of indirect light. This is direct lighting only.

Don't do this. Adjusting shaders in this type of scenario is doomed to failure as you will be resorting to glowing materials. Glowing (self-lit) materials can produce good results, but are going to require that you tweak and adjust constantly.

If you don't have IDL, use an IBL for the secondary lighting. Plan to adjust the IBL luminance, and not mess with the shaders too much.

Quote - Bloody marvellous, BB.  Many thanks for this. 

You're very welcome. Come back with questions if you like. I'm done for the moment.

Rightio.  I'll bookmark the thread anyhow.

bookmarking