Rendering flat metal surfaces

[JuhaHo]

I'm sure this has been discussed earlier, but I couldn't fine one, so I started my own. What would be the best practice for rendering flat surfaces. I have sometimes used large scale bump mapping, but I'm sure the is better way. Attached picture has bee made with V-Ray Steel_Blurrt material. As we can see the flat surfaces do not look like metal at all.

What's Your method?

[fixeighted]

Simply all in the reflection, so strategically placed lights/reflection cards to reflect, as e.g. phone renders have, or flat screen tvs

[JuhaHo]

Thanks,

I have no idea what reflection card is so I googled for it. This fills my feed, but I don't think it's related.

www.holstee.com

Is there any other meanings for that?

[JuhaHo]

I placed single plate with emissive material outside the view. Bit more interesting, but it requires some work.

[piotrus3333]

Add nice chamfers on the edges plus some delicate bump everyehere - nothing is as perfect as cubes from 3ds max.

[JuhaHo]

Add nice chamfers on the edges plus some delicate bump everyehere - nothing is as perfect as cubes from 3ds max.

It's not that easy. I work with scenes consisting of tens oh thousands of CAD-objects. I'm looking for an universal way for rendering flat metal surfaces in those scenes.

[piotrus3333]

In that case fake chamfers with VRayEdgesTex.

[JuhaHo]

Yes, but CAD geometry is already chamfered geometrically correctly. I'm looking a way to bring metalness to planar portions of surfaces.

[piotrus3333]

Yes, but CAD geometry is already chamfered geometrically correctly. I'm looking a way to bring metalness to planar portions of surfaces.

It seems like exemple you posted is not quite representative of CADs you are working with. Can you share a bit more?

[JuhaHo]

It seems like exemple you posted is not quite representative of CADs you are working with. Can you share a bit more?

I made this sample scene by using standard max primitives to underline the issue. I have planar, cylindrical, spherical and double curved surfaces. Every other form than planar has metallic look. My intention was to open a discussion, what would be the best practice to have some metalness at the planar surfaces too.

[piotrus3333]

I made this sample scene by using standard max primitives to underline the issue. I have planar, cylindrical, spherical and double curved surfaces. Every other form than planar has metallic look. My intention was to open a discussion, what would be the best practice to have some metalness at the planar surfaces too.

VRayEdgesTex to get rid of sharp edges.
Some surface bump, smooth and gentle, perfect just doesn't look realistic.
Anisotropic reflections if suitable.
Image based lighting for iteration speed, maybe some randomized setup mixing 2 or 3 environment maps so you can quickly click through options if manual setup is too tedious.
Always texture area lights, avoid perfect shapes.

[JuhaHo]

I always use HDR Environment map. On attached picture I have created a bump map to metal material. It changes a bit, but not increase the metalness of the flat surfaces very much.

[JuhaHo]

Here's updated rendering. On cylinder top I have used carefully placed omni for highlight creation. On cube top I have used emissive reflector. Which one do You consider better looking?

[JuhaHo]

Based on Jon A. Bell Book 3DS Max 6 Killer Tips 2004, I made this. On page 80 there's a tip called "Adding "oomph" to flat reflected surfaces". I used VRayNoiseTex as a 5% bump map with tiling 0.1. In addition, I placed very narrow VRay rectangular light on top of the objects. Interestingly the effect is visible only in flat surfaces.

I don't know if this get any better.

[JuhaHo]

I'm beginning to get some greenish light from client side on my renderings. However I have ran into slight performance issues with my new material settings. I wonder why it takes full 24 hours to render my scene with image size of 3508 x 2480 (printable A4-size).