I hate shaders, do you?
 

How exactly do you know which values to use for shaders? Like, if I want to make metal or something? I play around endlessly, but I can never get a satisfiying (sp?) texture. I don't have Photoshop, so it is Maya or MSPaint. Do you guys have any websites with shader tutorials or shaders themselves? Particularly metals?

There are lots of places that you can download shaders, the most popular one probably being www.highend3d.com. One thing that can help is after you download it, take a look at how they made it so you can use that info later.

I believe that the key to create your own shaders (among learning from other's) is to understand the physical phenomenons you are adjusting. There is no point on tweaking the sliders if you don't know what they do. Even if you do understand what's going on, you still need to experiment to get the result you want. Just don't try to adjust too many things at a go. And remember that lighting has a huge impact on the final result too...patience is another key word here :) (as always).

Exactly!

Good lighting can make, or break a shot.

For the specs on one type of basic metal setting, try this:

1. Create a Blinn Shading material
2. Color at default, or a little lower.
3. Diffuse at 0.3
4. Eccentricity at 0.1
5. Specular rolloff at 0.9
6. Reflectivity at default
7. For the Specular color, use a basic 2D Fractal with a Frequency ratio of 2.0

Now, light it using a basic 3 point lighting stup for a test render, and play with it from there.

Basic metal most always begins with a Blinn with a low diffuse value, and a medium-high specular value.

The fractal map is there to create/help break-up the highlights.

Good luck, and ALWAYS check-out, and investigate other metal shaders to learn why they work for certain situations.

No metal, even chrome, is EVER super clean.
There is ALWAYS some sort of grime that breaks up the highlights.

Hope this has helped!

Yes, understanding is the biggest thing. I never got the hang of shaders; I'll check out Highend 3d. Thanks guys!