I have been trying to come up with a good shader for black pearls. I have BB’s pearls from mathematic and have gone through the discussion in the other pearl threads, but I am still having a problem with it. The picture is where I am now. Black pearls have a slight green tint to them. I think I’m getting close, but any help would be greatly appreciated.

I know this is wrong, but I don’t have a strong grip on the process yet.

Current setup is below.

Poser pro 2012. Render done with two lights, one infinite and one spot. Gama was turned on, set 2.2

It looks pretty good already.

Reflection_Value should not be constant.

You want to plug a Fresnel_Blend node in there. Make the inner color black. Set the IOR to 1.7 or thereabouts. Set the Reflection_Value to .8.

You want slightly blurred reflections, too. Set the softness to .5.

Thanks BB ... I'll try that right now.

Soft reflections often require higher quality on the reflect node. The flatter the object, the more the quality needs to be raised. Pearls are round so maybe you won't need to raise it.

If your reflections look grainy, try increasing the Reflect node Quality from .2 to around .5.

You don't want to just jam it up because it adds to render time.

Thanks ... seeing some improvement and still making adjustments. It is addressing one of my primary concers that everything seemed to be a little too sharp.

What the pearls are reflecting makes a big difference. The picture above has EZskin. I ran a test without SSS and gama. Definate drop is quality when the skin quality is lower.