Trying to do some dirt, trying to not over do it?.......dave

attaching two bump maps is pretty easy.
just create two bump2d nodes, in the hypershade drag one onto the other. select outNormal to normalCamera. you should now be able to control two levels of bump. so you could have deeper scratches than general rust for example.
or use ctbrams text and control that with one bump node, scratches with another and rust with another.

hope this helps.

aahhhhh sweet man thanks...I didnt think of piggyback.....I will try that then...:happy:

I did not say my black point was incorrect so no, most people still do have their black points set to high and more importantly renders of dark objects against a black background or that are highly back lit and then asking for feedback on the details of their model is also still POINTLESS. Which was my point in the first place and still is!

Does that answer your question smart ass!

Well that was fRICKin hot man....good to see you are back in form ct...LOL...BTW now I know how to piggyback bumps...I shall continue

i think the problem is that most people just hit render using the default lights and have a black background (some times have a grey plane as a ground)

there are two things i think would make bog standard renders better
either creating a plane and applying a bend deformer, curve the plane on one side and use that. I forget the name of it, but its simulates something studio photographers use.
or...
create the ground plane that most people do, when you render you have a grey plane and a black background which looks stupid and crap. but if you select the environment tab in the camera and use the colour picker to change the background to the same colour as the grey plane in the render. they should match exactly and it will look like an endless grey but you can have ground shadows.

my renders on the first page are setup with the first method.

Cleaned up the seams, just the bump and spec to do..........dave

Yes, this is exactly the point I was making honestdom. I even have posted a tutorial on setting up a stage and proper render settings and changing the damn environment light from black to a light shade of grey at the very least and it annoys me when people insist on posting crapping renders against a black background and people with their monitor brightness set to 100% saying they can see things fine and it must just be me!

I don't take well to snide remarks like the other guy made!

Anyway, if anyone else cares to carry this on send me a pm and lets please not redirect this thread.

Dave, the texturing is looking very good.

Perhaps you should have taken my comment in the good humour in which it was intended instead of being insulting.

First try of final gather, the texture is still lacking some thing..........dave

Sorry forgot to say thank you miss nova for the tutorial

You're welcome Dave, not sure if you mean the dome lighting but I guess so. Watch those raytraced shadows they come out way too crisp at default so you should set some light radius to blur the outer edge in a final render and add rays to stop the pixelation. For dome lighting I just want to say one thing because it's important to be aware of, it's a bit of a cheap trick I use it to get quick result and you can't break geometry based light sources. In general for mental ray and indirect illumination your results easily come out very CG render like if you don't have other lights in addition. Something like this will have a huge effect on the outcome of your textures as well, that's why I mention it. Try relighting it without the dome to see how it comes out. You'll just benefit so much from learning how to use direct illumination first it's not too difficult to do and it's crucial both for rendering times and good end results.

For the textures it looks to me like you've got pure black and white materials in there which is why it doesn't come together as a whole. Black absorbs all light and white will completely reflect it which is artificial and would never happen in the real world due to color bleed between materials and multiple colored light sources. If you try to soften those colors a bit to match up with eachother, and also have a crack at lighting the jerry can with spots I think you'll get a much better result. Try to imagine an outdoor scenario where you'd have a directional light with a warm light yellow color as a sun, a few light blue spots as fill from the sky and maybe some low intensity green or brown bounce lights aimed up at the can.

Also the bump on the green material has to come down to a lower value, it is too high at the moment.

That looks really good Dave. Good work. Did you find some reference with the ABP logo painted?

That does look like a pretty damn good piece there dave.....and the bump is a little harsh I have to agree...but you have stamped your name for sure in this challenge.

cheers bullet

i agree with miss nova, try lighting without FG. The images on the first page that i did are just 3 point lighting with no final gather. I think they look fine. The settings are still pretty low so the render time was only a few seconds.

im not fond of the rust, the patina seems to be going in the same direction. Which doesn't look natural.

Thanks all
Yes I will do some more work on the lighting at the moment fixing things as I see them, the bump map is nearly right, spec needs more work and colour. ctbram I used your sign just pulled it a part using photoshop, sellection, colour range, high lights for the white and shadow for the black...........dave