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aluminum


stephanie

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hi, thanks for your help. i am trying to render window frame aluminum. i have tried aluminum, coarse aluminum, anodized, chromium even, but, they all turn out rather gray and dark, anything but metallic. i have tried to play with ambient light and light intensity, but to no avail. is there any trick for this please? thanks!

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Hi Stephanie,

Assuming you are viewing the render in Final or Custom mode.......

I have to agree that the metal finishes tend not to *actually* look like metal, but there are a number of things that can be worked.

Editing the texture to tweak the reflectivity can help, as can increasing recursion levels (at the expense of render times).

Another thing that I have found is that the position and type of lighting objects has a profound effect on the appearance of any texture with a reflective component. Even a small adjustment in lighting angle can change textures from being matte to "shiney"

HTH,

cheers,

N.

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Thank you Nicholas. I am going to try out the different options you described. The aluminum frame is rectangular in section, and all sun rays are parallel, if the aluminum surface does reflect light in the same way as a mirror, there is going to be one single angle from which the light gets reflected to the viewer. For a more realistic aluminum, i will have to get the surface to diffuse light, not sure exactly how to do that...

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You may want to create some "billboards" out side of the scene that will create a reflective environment that will give the surface of the metal some variation.

I've also found the chrome shader to produce good results when trying to represent bare metal finishes.

Good Luck

[ 12-10-2003, 08:57 AM: Message edited by: MikeB ]

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quote:

You may want to create some "billboards" out side of the scene that will create a reflective environment that will give the surface of the metal some variation.

Hi again Mike,

Cunning!

I take it you mean a plain "mirror" texture here

quote:

For a more realistic aluminum, i will have to get the surface to diffuse light, not sure exactly how to do that...

Hi Stephanie,

Again; you need to fiddle with the reflectivity controls.

quote:

Is this not a problem of needing to assign a Style class and texture to the frame? See 5-29 in the VWA v10 manual.

Erich,

the problem here is not how to apply a texture to the frame, but how to get the texture to "actually" look like Aluminium.

cheers,

N.

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thank you all for your help! [smile] so far, i am not having much success. the reflectivity is... well too many variables to adjsut [Frown] and quite frankly, i have no idea what do they stand for. i have been trying them blindly, managed to get them paler, not as dark, but still nothing that looks like aluminum. the silver or silver plate finish does get it to look brighter, but still doesn't look metallic. the idea of a billborad is very interesting, perhaps the problem is with the fact that the surrounding is pure white. i wonder how a piece of aluminum will look like in a uniformly lit white room. but again, donald judd's sculpture in museums still look very metallic. i just wish that i have enough time to experiment with all that [smile] is there a book or a site that teaches all these tricks? you know, just like the photoshop books... thanks!

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  • 4 weeks later...

I have experienced the same dilemma often. What I've recently discovered for aluminum specifically is to use the chrome setting with a light grey base. Turn the chrome down a bit so it's not too swirly, then add a texture to it. This helps to get some variables in the color. When adding a texture, either scale it to very very large, or very very small so you don't get a pattern in your object.

When lighting the object, make sure any direct lights are not turned up to high, this will just make everything appear white. I usually just use ambient lights set at about 30%.

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  • 2 weeks later...

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