Hi. This is the base of the new scene I'm working on (another HDRI fake). I thought the mats looked interesting, that's why I'm posting here this early stage. The ball uses AgentS suggestions on scratched metal. It's a basic reflective metal texture with bump driven by three different pictures in channels A, B and C. Specularity color provided the iridescence. The ground is a Lemog photographic texture with a cloud texture in channel B to drive reflection and specularity in the hope to achieve a "spotty-wet" feeling. S.

Actually, they're not DTE at all. It's just that the acronym is so cool... ;-) S.

Good looking mats Stefano. The floor looks really good and I can't think of anywhere else where you get such beautiful photographic textures than Lemog. BTW, the Dark Valentine image was a trial in lighting too. It had a plane at an angle above the objects, whit with 100% diffusion and ambiance and 1 spotlight about 500, pointing up to it. The atmosphere was also turned off. Catlin

Stefano, you are a big tease! I was hoping that these would be more shared mats. :-D They both look fantastic by the way. The texture on the ball is very convincing. Angela

Very convincing render and textures.

@Angela: I'd be glad to share the ball mat or mail it to you if you're interested. It's not a DTE play, but I have it in my presets. It uses a photo texture by Mayang to drive bump. @catlin: did you use True Ambience in Dark Valentine? In this last image of mine I tried it again, but I'm not satisfied with the results so, once again, I turned it off. Not much a difference, IMO. Not to mention the incredible rendertimes that using TA implies. Now I'm rendering without it, with Softshadows and DOF at 144 rpp: 4 hours compared to the 2 days (!) of the render with TA turned on (and 64rpp, not 144). @danamo: thanx a lot. It's only a WIP, I'm currently rendering the final with a fake HDRI sphere surrounding it. S.

I didn't use true ambiance on that one although I did try it, but as you said it ups the render time. I've just upgraded my cpu to a Athlon 2.5 GHz Barton core, which means it runs at the speed of a 2.8, so I may try rendering again with effects and see what happens. 8) Catlin

That floor kicks ass!

Oh, very nice. it looks pretty realistic as it is, I don't know if it needs true ambience.