how do i make something not look cartoony?
 

Hi people,

does anyone know how to make a surface that isn't so cartoony as the blinn and lambert materials?

i'll attach the render of the picture i made... the only materials i've used are blinn and lambert, are there any more... metellic materials?

YOu would prabalby need to make an environment for the material to reflect. Then you might need to look into texturing and look for tutorials on creating shading networks to mimic real world materials.

hmm, i'm not sure i want it to reflect the surroundings though

maybe i should have said a material more like paint on car, i dont think i ever see cars reflection surroundings, unless i've never noticed before :confused:

Car materials in Maya are usually created from a layered shader with a base colour and a reflected colour and sometimes a third shiny coat, not to say you can't create a metal look from a blin though.
Realistic material creation is an art and something we all strive for .The main things you need to work on apart from not just having a uniform colour on the object (check out most things in reall life and you will see they have faults , wear and fade in the colour) is getting the specular and relectivity right for the material in question.All Maya materials can be adjusted and tweeked to death so it is possible to simlate almost anything, however getting it to look perfect takes time practice and experience.
you might also consider the roughness of a material and create a bump or displacement to simulate that.
Dirt maps can be applied to the Diffuse to create more realism also.

thanks for such an informative answer ;)

i see what i should be looking for now

Everything is too clean. You can export those textures into Photoshop and "ugly" them up. You don't want your solid textures to look too clean.

I have found making stuff look dirty is the #1 quickest way to make them look more realistic.

yeah being too clean has been mentioned to me a lot before :p

i'll have to make textures or something for it

lighting, textures, and shaders go a long way in the realism department