HDRI Specular Highlights Problem

[DaForce]

Thanks jujubee, yeah im an admin at Evermotion so no problems there

Yeah like natty said, it is hard with just a HDRI, but it depends on the hdri. I would just put in an omni and get it to affect specular only, that might be worth a shot.

[jujubee]

Love the Boob shields ...... Private work or client ..... or Fantasy ?

Hey Natty. Private work for a friend of mine. I modelled this off of one of her toys (from her sister's toy store) which can be found at Schylling. If you just peck around for 'Tin Toys' in google you'll come across a wealth of retro-styled robots. There's alot of good stuff out there.

this one is more to the point.

Thanks again cp, but the only thing I think is being done differently from what I'm currently doing (besides using splutterfish's generous HDRI loader) is the RGB level getting bumped to the clamped white point. My objects turn out more like Figure 1 which is dull rather than Figure 2 which is more of what I want. In figure 2, my understanding is that they are using a .jpg for the environment instead.

What I was looking to do was actually tweaking the material of an object itself to obtain a 'shellac' sort of effect using only HDRI. Basic Max Blinn materials don't work and I can't get the Vraymtl to shellac properly using this method. I wish there was some sort of separate 'HDRI Shellac material' for reflection while maintaining underlying colors/bitmaps. More like the eye-popping effects of Figure 2 in your link. Natty's last suggestion circumvents this problem in an indirect way - I really dislike adding lights if at all possible but it serves wonderfully for what I am looking to do.

[Trapezium]

Keep ion mind that the example images on the toy site are photographed in a studio environment with soft boxes similar to area lights.

--Jon

[jujubee]

Mmm. Yeah. Sure. Something like that.

It still remains, I still can't get my nose and boob protectors to look like those pool balls without the omni blowing out the rest of my scene.

[percydaman]

can you show a screenshot of your material setup?

[Trapezium]

Try setting the light to only specular.

--Jon

[jujubee]

can you show a screenshot of your material setup?

Percy, thanks. I started to get screens together but then I really got around to thinking about it and there really was no standard material I was focusing on. I must have gone through about 20 types of materials, no exaggeration and they changed from render to render.

But now I have an entirely different setup as I was going to post a downloadable example. This one involves a different HDR (uffuzi probe.) I messed with some new shellac materials as well. Also downgraded back to Max 6 so it would be more compatible. I'm noticing closer results that I was looking for and about to finish up my render. Not sure exactly what I can put my finger on now - I think it may be moving back to Max 6 which may have done something different. I will post some current Max 6 results as well as some materials you can all download.

Try setting the light to only specular.

Did Jon, thanks - was still blowing out other materials that I didnt want it to effect. Perhaps includes/excludes needed to be applied on the light source.

[jujubee]

I moved some of my new metal mats over to the off-topic section as they really dont seem to belong to a shiny reflective black genre. My temporary solution for now is to use a Max raytrace material as it allows you to specify diffuse independent of reflectivity.