Metallic texture
 

How do I get a texture to look like real metal, the shiny sort of steel look? Is it merely just looking for a texture, or do I have to do something special, like render with Mental Ray?

I found exactly the kind of shader I need:
http://www.highend3d.com/maya/downlo...ption&&id=1690

Thing is... I'm not sure how to use it properly. It says it will look like it should when properly lit. Is it also in the way I render it?

What I did was, I assigned the objects I needed to have that kind of texture and assigned it to the material (polished platinum). But when lit (I used ambient light), it just looked kind of like a regular blinn.

How can I make it look like the platinum that is shown in the picture at that URL I posted?

Thank you!

You need to have some form of environment for it to reflect, otherwise it just looks like std blinn

Thanks! I'll check it out. But my problem is not really the reflections... the actual texture isn't there. It doesn't LOOK platinum. I'll post some pics to show you what I mean. But anyway, I will try it out. Thanks again!
--JM

OK, this is the image that came with the download. The top ring is the polished platinum, which is exactly what I need. It is an edited anisotropic. The download comes with three of them, the others are called brushed and hammered.

(I've never used anisotropics before so I'm not really sure what it's for)

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/235/4...cc9a572d6f.jpg

So what I did was, I took the anisotropic called polished platinum and applied it to a sphere. As you mentioned last time, I should have reflections on it, so I tried that, even though the polished platinum picture above doesn't really seem to have any reflections except for lights.

I used mental ray and added an HDR image to the environment. This is the result I got:

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/195/4...1f20472227.jpg

As you can see, it looks kind of like a black pearl. Then I added an ambient light and got this:

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/237/4...b4b1297b27.jpg

While it does look pretty, it's just not the same as the effect that I want, which is the top ring of the first picture above. Right now it looks like a really smooth grey pearl.

Just to try it out, I rendered it this time with Maya Software. This is what I got:

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/172/4...b9cd7ff3f3.jpg

Well, as you can see, it looks kind of like a regular blinn.

As was stated from the page where the shader comes from (http://www.highend3d.com/maya/downlo...inum-1690.html), it seems to be that the lighting is key to making it look like it should. But I just can't figure it out.

Does anyone know how I can get these shaders to look the way the picture shows it to be?

Thank you! :)

I don't know asbout that particular shader but this is what i got from making a very dark colored blinn with boosted reflectivity and reflection blur.^^

WOW! That's what I want! OK, so how do I do that? Dark blinn with boosted reflectivity and reflection blur... reflectivity and reflection blur settings are in the blinn's attributes?

yep they're all in there. just scroll down some and you'll see a mental ray section, expand that and there you'll find the reflection blur attributes. have fun :P