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Hi everybody, I would be *very* happy if you manage to help me with my metal materials. All I got is on the picture. I tried to reproduce what I achieved in C4D [see the link, please] and tweaked it as far as I could. I made it dark, reflective, and did many trials with other parameters until it stopped improving anything :/ But it still doesn`t resemble good chrome.

did you try diffrent shader types like oren-nayar under material options?

for some free stuff i made
and for almost daily fotos

I have not done a metal in blender still, but that huge black background seems not good to see reflections. Perhaps a cloud texture in Nor to blur reflections.

You have a good example in the "Blender Material Library" (v1.1 I think). Just append that material(s) in your scene.

criss digital art

ysvry: I tried Minnaert, Oren-Nayar and Lambert diffuse and WardIso, Phong, Blinn and Cook-Torr speculars. To be honest I saw only very moderate differences. Now it is Minnaert diffuse and Blinn specular. They seem slightly better than previous ones, but the material is still not very close to a good chrome. Looking fwd your replies...

criss: Thx. I tried MatLib, but I didn`t get anything that could resemble metal. Maybe it was created before the raytracer was included into Blender Internal or I couldn`t get the right effect. vespertilum: Here`s a bit better bkground. It helped, but if you have further ideas, I would be happy.

Increasing light, decreasing a few reflections, perhaps shadows. ???

you might add another texture with a little scratches or small bump or specular map, looks like the reflection is too perfect, just a wild guess.

for some free stuff i made
and for almost daily fotos

vespertilum: Thanks, I tried clouds in normal channel, but it didnt work fine for me. vespertilum, again:) ysvry: OK, I will try it today (Im at work now) :( :/ :: :O

you have no (or in post 6) a bad environment-- reflective surfaces have to have something to reflect in order to look right. Try giving yourself a sky dome with a mapped photo. By "bad environment" I mean that the distribution of light, shadow and color isn't very natural-- making it a less good choice as a reflection map. Unless your balls are highly polished ball bearings, they're also too reflective . . . give them a little anisotropy, something to reflect, and they'll be fine. Looking at the link to the discussion on the Maxon board, most of the points made there apply here, too. One good one is about turning down specular. Specular is really just a "fake" form of blurred reflections . . . realworld materials don't have a separate specular and reflective components, specular is more like the scattered component of reflection. . . so for realism, you want to crank specular down if you've got reflection high. simple solution: HDRI/skydome illumination reflection with Yafray makes all metals look good. Also, chrome reads better as an isolated element-- a chrome bumper on a car meets a painted surface, which is less reflective. When you fill your secen with reflective elements, it stops looking like anything other than early nineties raytracing experiments. . .mix very reflective things with other things that are not as reflective. Works better.

There was an article in 3D world on interior lighting a few months back and they suggested turning off "recieve shadows" for chrome. This was in a Maya tut and I'm just learning "to blend" so I don't know if Blender has that option but if so maybe worth a shot?

yes under material then shaders , you can switch of shadows or transparant shadows.

for some free stuff i made
and for almost daily fotos