Hello everyone, Here is a pic of a metal case I modelled. Im now at the texturing stage and Im in a need of a few suggestions. I want a sleek metal look, not necessarilly a shiny new look, I used a few old metal textures also. My problem is that Im afraid the details are getting lost because the textures are too similar. I would welcome any suggestions anyone might have, oh and same goes for the lighting. In this pic I used the preset tree-point lighting wizard (with a few tweaks on one of the spots). In the final project this case is going to be used on a different background (basically a flat color) as a kind of detailed icon (it will be smaller also, only about a couple of inches wide). So lighting comments are also most welcome. Thanks for the input. H&B

I think its looks fantastic, H&B. But you can try work with the bump channel to avoid a shiny texture. Try to mix some noise parameters in the bump for a more brushed look. But, as I say before, looks fantastic so far! ;-)

3 point lighting can make things look flat due to the use of both a key and a fill light. Try using the 2 point lighting if you want to define shapes better (bump especially flattens out almost completely in a standard 3 point lighting situation (it does somewhat in real life too, that's why there are so many wrinkle free old people on film)). Remember that the backlight (can't remember its english name, but it defines the edges of an object to draw them out of the background to give more dimension to an image) should be placed almost directly on the camera axis (so it should have an almost exact opposite position of the camera to the object it is lighting).