An old model rerenderd. Procedural bump mapping would be great to create some bumped/worn metallic look!
gecko
Hehe, I like the design - it would make a really interesting key chain 
I second the procedural bump maps (noise/cloud/scratch) like max has, the real question is who’s job that really is - the ASGVis or McNeel’s?
/BlueShift
gecko
Here’s the material, was asked for it trough PM. Don’t use too high subdivs ore the noise in the material will go away
gecko
cool model. Why highlight glossy on 1? Can’t see what it does on the model. I hope we get access to AO shader in Rhino build, would be cool on this model as well
gecko
Highlight glossy = fake hightlight. If you use both highlight and reflection glossy, you actually get double glossies coming from the lightsource (once real reflected lightsource, and once the faked glossies).
If hightlight glossy=1.0 this means you simply don’t use the fake highlight.
gecko
Yeah, I think you are right about this. (just did a quick test) Now I am wondering how Vray for max handles this, because there they are tied together by default.
gecko
It handles it exactly the same… That’s why I don’t think it’s a good idea to tie them together by default.
You can also go the other way around, use only highlight glossyness. But if you set refl glossy to 1.0, this will give you sharp real reflections of course. That’s why, in vrayformax, there is an option ‘trace reflections’ that you can turn off. If you do all this, you get a simple fake highlight material (like a std max material). Also take a look here for vrayformax behaviour:
http://www.aversis.be/extra\_tutorials/vray\_basic\_material\_settings\_01.htm
(step 20 etc)
Here’s an example of refl and highlight glossiness turned on:
and here with highlight glossy=0.68 and refl glossy set to 1.0
Both are nice too actually, it just depends on what you wanna do
But in real life, no material would have sharp reflections, and then get a glossy highlight from lightsources only.
gecko
I think it is right to tie them together (in terms of Physical correctness). The rendering on top of this thread looks more like a material with a slight bump, rather than a glossy material, which is nice though. Many plastic objects have this.
The second rendering looks as actual glossy material (glossy on a microscopic level) and the third rendering is a perfect shader for metal and metallic shaders as it looks like it has a slight amount of microscopic roughness.
Brilliant!
gecko
I don’t agree on the physical correctness. Why should a lightsource reflect double? In real life, there is no difference between a light source (for example a bulb) or an object that is simply ‘light’. For example my groundplane is very light, and bounces of much light and is reflected in the gecko, but it is not double reflected because in 3D this groundplane is not considered a lightsource.
Remember vray some time ago, it didn’t even have fake highlights. When it was introduced by popular demand, many people complained that their old scenes suddenly had much stronger glossy reflections
I agree on your other comments, all combinations have their use and can look pretty real, even though they’re not strictly physically correct.
gecko
In principle I think you are right, stating that it should not reflect ‘double’. However Vray is a raytracer, so I can imagine that highlights which are partly caused by luminance, partly by reflections are calculated separately.
The luminance calculation is affected by the highlight glossiness, the reflection calculation is affected by the reflection glossiness. That’s how I see it.
Hopefully Vlado can shed some light on this…
gecko
Good point.
I would also like Vlado to comment on this
gecko
What supports my idea, is that if you make lights invisible, you get them not visible in reflections, but if you have highlight glossy on, you can see that the light is being spread over the object.
gecko
Yeah but that’s the whole idea behind fake highlights. A fake highlight is a highlight created by an invisible (or infinite small) light. But in reality, a highlight is nothing more than a reflection (usually of a lightsource).
gecko
Have you tired to render it as a rubber toy (orange jelly)? You could fake SSS using fog and glossy refractions/relfections.
/BlueShift
gecko
Yeah, but there is no glossy refraction in the vraymaterial for now! (hint hint)
gecko
Here’s an orange version
gecko
Nice lighting and overall image quality, any info on rendering times etc?
gecko
Nice!
/BlueShift
gecko
Rendertime for this last one was 36minutes for the 1260px wide image. Rendered on a dual xeon 2.8Ghz. Two area lights with 20 subdivs, material glossy also 20 subdivs, qmc AA, noise th=0.003.
Didn’t really optimize it, just entered some settings that should produce a high quality image!
gecko
The right front arm has a total SSS look to it (orange version)…anyone else see this?
btw: …render looks great.