I have this model of a light reflector, which has a mirror material on it. However the surface should appear to be facetted, as in the rendering next to it. The model is smooth, and I would like to find a material solution to make it look like it’s facetted. I cannot modify the model, as I need to apply this look to hundreds of other imported step files, so remodeling each reflector is just too much work.
I have been trying stuff with bump maps created from z-depth maps, checkers etc…
I also tried to apply a 3ds max material with the facetted option turned on, but for some reason this doesn’t work on this imported step. Even converting to editable poly and removing smoothing groups doesn’t help. It stays smooth all the time. But even this would not be a good solution as the mesh will be triangles instead of squares.
Anyone has any ideas about how to get a similar look by using maps/materials?
Have you considered using clone and align? you can model one faceted object, clone it to all of them then just look at one while you move it into place using ‘local’ pivot mode, which will affect all of them the same.
You may need to reset the xform on all the lights first, to make sure the cloned versions align properly. Should only take a couple minutes to set it up though.
I have to render out about 20 ‘families’ of profiles containing lights. Each family consist of ±50 different lights that can be placed on them.
I get 1 file for each light in each family. So that is about 1000 files. Not every file has this type of reflector spot af course, some are TL lights etc…
So I am not sure about how many of these types there will be, and I am not sure on how many variations there are. Since I don’t want to check each file to see of the reflector is the same size and shape, I was looking for a solution with maps. Then if the light is a bit bigger or anything, it doesn’t matter (ok the squares will be bigger too but that is not a problem).
They do need to be lit, but maybe I can use a combination of diffuse map and reflections to make it look ok.
I have to do a lot of steps allready to go from each step file to a max file that can be rendered. So every step I can leave away saves me loads of time in the end.
This might not work, but try to attach the reflector to a newly created box or something similar, I have done this on imported cad models to reset the seemingly baked in normals. This should make you able to turn off smoothing..
A normal/bump map should do what you need, I think. You just need a grid of squares/rectangles, each with a different linear gradient in it - just make it in Photoshop. Convert to normal (e.g use CrazyBump etc) and you should be good to go. You could search for a disco ball material and see if someone already made one, but it wouldn’t take long to make.
