glossy black paint

[Mat Caird]

Hi All

I often use glossy black paint in my designs. However, black is a difficult color to render, so I wonder if any of you have a good trick for this.

Usually I use this black color on things like window frames, kitchen kick boards, neither of which have curves to cause specular effects to define the edges.

What I usually do is create a dark grey texture, with plastic reflection, but it is never very good.

I have tried a dark grey 'clouds' texture, using two shades of grey, and this is Ok for a matt black window frame, but I suspect cloud shaders of increasing render times.

What I am trying to render today is a gloss black gate.

I will use final quality renderworks, with HDRI lighting, and maybe a point light to brighten the gate itself.

Anyone have any tricks for me?

Thanks in advance, Mat.

[Ray Libby]

Good question. I've struggled with this.

[CipesDesign]

Here is a screenshot of a Glossy Black surface, with a couple random shapes to show the reflection. The black surface consists of two extrudes, each about 1/4" thick. One, a simple black-colored extrude is covered by a second extrude which has been assigned a simple "Glass" texture. I'm sure there are other ways to achieve this. Perhaps someone else will chime in...

[cad@sggsa]

Good day Mat

I have made two different textures for this.

1st is a Plain Color black, Simple, Metal Reflectivity with specular and Ambient set to 100. This I use for my metal stacking chairs.

My 2nd is an edit from texture called "Metal Chrome Plate", all I did is change the color to Black. I used this texture for a glossy black stage ramp in a fashion show, worked wonderful.

Keep Well

[grant_PD]

black and white are the most difficult colors to render, IMHO. That's because, akin to photography, one must balance the white point and black point of the picture. I don't find that renderworks deals with this very well, although it does offer the crude ambient lighting tool. But this seems to only act as a brightness dial.

Keys to getting good blacks is to determine if the black is reflective or not. Black auto carpet doesn't reflect light back at all, and should be very dark. But, a reflective polished black surface should also be very dark, with mirror like reflections and specular highlights. Is one "darker" than the other in the rendering? Again, it's subjective, and entirely up to the renderer to decide.

My advice is to get the blacks close enough, then pop that rendering into photoshop. 30 seconds with the curves tool can save you hours of rendering time.

[Mat Caird]

Well, I tried the various options suggested, and ended up with Carl's idea of using chrome, with the color set to black. I didn't quite do what Carl suggested, but the result looks great to me.

Thnaks for all the advice.

Mat

[cad@sggsa]

Mat,

Please go see my post in SGG Works with the AFI Renders PDF.

http://techboard.nemetschek.net/ubbthreads/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=118544&gonew=1#UNREAD

The stage was with Black Chrome. Maybe you need to add some lights, just some small ones, to bring out the highlight points.

Your light source would need to be on the same side as the camera.

Rendering something like this on such a small scale would be difficult in any render, try and change your white background to black.

edit add:

I had some troble trying to load the real texture on here, but added a screen shot of the attributes.

See haw that works

Edited July 2, 2009 by cad@sggsa