Need help with materials/texturing metal

[soulburn3d]

Well, the other parts look like chrome too, it's just the base color is lighter, and there isn't as much distortion in the blade to catch highlights, which is why you're getting pretty flat looking reflections. Could you maybe post what you have so far so we can better figure out the problems you're having recreating this materials?

- Neil

[Amuse]

Heres what i have so far. The dark metal looks ok i guess, but im not happy with the reflectivity, but had to do that to get the right colors.

And im pretty happy with the golden triangle thingy.

Need help with tweaking the dark metal to make it look more, well, metaly :p
And the blade. its ok, but it feels a bit to much like silver. but im ok with that.

http://img505.imageshack.us/my.php?image=anduril3im5.jpg

[soulburn3d]

Well, the first thing I'd do is place the blade in a similar pose as in the original reference photo. Yes, later on it's a good idea to make sure the sword works from a more dramatic angle, but for right now when trying to match a look, that's much easier if it's in the same position and environment. So move your camera, make the background white.

Next is your reflection map. How is it being applied? A spherical mapping of some sort? I'd expect on the flat blade for it to reflect very large, long, boring colors, not all those tree details. And how strong is the reflectivity of the blade? You may want to mix a little of that reflectivity out, and mix in a little white diffuse to tone down the effect. The darker metal is pretty good, so I wouldn't worry about that much. Is the blue tint coming from the lighting or from your environment map? You may want to get things tinted closer to white. I'd also add the detailed writing on the sword itself, small details like that can really help a surface feel more realistic, sometimes the lack of detail is what makes a surface feel "not real" for some unspecified reason.

Once you have something that matches the reference pretty well, then you can go back, change the camera angle, tint your lighting and environment bluish, and do whatever else you'd like to do to make the image more your own.

- Neil

[Dtox]

I might be mistaken, but I think the difference in the handle and hand guard is actually created by tempering the steel.
Could also be 2 slightly different types of metal, with the handle and guard being a higher carbon steel, where the blade is stainless/surgical steel that contains more nickel and polished to a higher sheen.

You could try to add a slight luminance effect to the blade and darken the color of the handle to a darker gray to simulate high carbon steel.
Stainless steel is polished to a mirror like sheen, so it should have a very low diffuse value.
Where high carbon steel usually has a streaking effect that could be achieved by putting a grayscale map in the diffusion channel that has some light streaking with very low contrast.

The gray streaks should be very close in shade because too much of a difference in the shades of gray will create a more dramatic effect which isn't what you want.

[Amuse]

The blue tint on the handle comes from the sky in the HDRI i used. The reflective is a VRAY HDRI image used as both the reflection and enviorment override in the vray render options. A mirrored ball mode, but looks somewhat the same in Spherican Enviorment mode

Will trye what you said, and get back here with the results :)

[Dtox]

The sky HDRI image isn't a great idea when working with the model and materials.
It will distort the appearance which will prevent you from seeing how the actual material looks.
You'll be better served by using a simple area light setup with planes as the area shape, or an HDRI made of simple shapes for the texturing phase.
Once you get to the final render phase, then add the sky HDRI.

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