101: setting up a scene to render highly realistic objects?

[Kinetic99]

Hello and thanks for your time,
Was hoping to get a refresh on some ideas and approaches.

My goal is to render highly realistic coins (gold, silver, copper etc) and I was wondering what the best way to set up my environment and scene should be?

What kind of lighting, platform, environmnent, GI should I consider?
what about rendering specs?

Looking for any ideas or thoughts.

thanks, K

[joconnell]

Pretty big question and all down to personal style - no one can really tell you how to do your job as such, might be worth pulling up a reference image of what you'd like?

So if you're looking at shiny things for starters I'd look at http://bertrand-benoit.com/blog/2012...materialism-1/ and http://bertrand-benoit.com/blog/2013...5-rough-metal/ as good and simple guides of setting up your materials. In terms of the lighting you could look at some kind of hdri based setup or something like this? http://www.hdrlightstudio.com/ - Alternatively if you can find any bits of information on how a photographer would place lights in real life for this, the same techniques will apply in vray.

[Kinetic99]

a great start, thanks for the info.
I know its a loaded question but was hoping to get some ideas started up and move from there. Or if others have tried rendering the same things.