Silver Material?

[Anton Andriesh]

Blurry reflections can be made with Blur/Defocus in Raytrace Antialiaser (check max's help)

The Metal Shader: it looks better for glass, not for metals, though is called so. I think that Anistropic would be better here, because of silver's soft transitions.

And finally IOR ... :rolleyes: IOR is Index of Refraction. Refraction, not Reflection. It's only for semiopaque materials

My unique advice is study the material. Success!

[gnarlycranium]

Actually, changing the IOR thingie (in the properties of the Fresnel falloff I used for the reflection) does a -lot- to how the object reflects light. Talks about it on this tutorial thingie I found in the list stickied to the top of this forum.

http://www.neilblevins.com/cg_education/metal_and_refs/metal_and_refs.htm

Aha! Blur/Defocus, you say? This seems promising! I will try it!

[gnarlycranium]

Well, the blur stuff worked, though it makes the rendering time even more evil (imagine that!). After some fiddling with that, and a lot of fussing with bump maps and the like, this is what I've got. Looking any better?

[Ian Jones]

Yeah, looking better. Still not right though. I'd say it looks like slightly weathered tin now. Did you know that tin is often found with silver, so your getting closer. :) hehe.

You may need to increase the resolution and quality of your texture and bump map. I can see the pixels of the logo on the ring and even some jpg compression I think. Add some 'dirt' or blackening on the texture map around any area that polishing or the rubbing of general use will not reach, like the de-boss of your logo text that you have already done (I just realised you have already done it... hehe). The specular highlights on this ring need to be more intense and sharper. You may need to do some post editing in photoshop, selecting the spec highlights and adding a sort of glow to them, to simulate an intense reflection. Perhaps blur them a touch and set this new layer to 'screen'.

What shader are you using?

I have this silver object in front of me now, and my observations are telling me it is much like chrome. It is your environment you place it in that determines what it will reflect. So if you add lots of mid to light grey surfaces around it it should look more silvery. The silver I have in my hand is not blurry in any way. Have you got an object to base your observations on? you should really get some silver to see what I mean. I would suggest an Anistropic shader, due to the fact it stretches the reflection along the grain of a surface which is just what you need for silver. I was reading about this somewhere. I'm sure you can find some tutes about anistropic shading somewhere.

One other thing about the ring. I think it should be rounded, having a curved surface is a common element of most rings. It will also help the reflection to look better too, that is why I would suggest you think about maybe rounding the surface.

Hope that helps.

[gnarlycranium]

Ian--

I'm using the regular old Raytrace material, I think with a Blinn shader.

I do have two silver rings on right now myself, actually. They're not as wide as what I'm going for (I hope this example shows you what that is, the pic is darn tiny), the ring is meant to be wide and flat, though I do keep wondering if I should curve it some, I don't really know what to do about that.

I don't know much about Photoshop, so I don't know how to add a glow with it, and I'd have a hard time changing the texture too-- I didn't make it. I think maybe some of what you're seeing might have to do with the way I had to use the output settings of the bitmap to massively increase the contrast.

As for Anistropy... the grain I see on my rings isn't stretched one way or the other. What I do see is a whole lot of tiny, tiny scratches that shine around the highlights in little bits of circular contours... IS there a way to get anistropy to do that? If there is, I don't know about it. I'll look.

[Ian Jones]

Yeah I think anistropy will add the lines (with settings tweaked), I'm only geussing though. I really don't know much about it.

[gnarlycranium]

Tonight I'll try curving the ring a wee bit, see if it can help without changing the shape too much.

Problem is, I need highlights that look basically like this. (scuse my total inability to draw with a mouse)

[Grosserfrosch]

When I wanted silver(and certain types of steel) I started with the max chrome material from the material library and just tweaked that.

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