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View Full Version : My brain has been on vacation lately so a couple of questions please!

Tugmaster
06-22-2003, 04:10 PM
This is an old Kodak camera I modeled for a scene I'm doing and I'm having trouble with the specular highlights on the.....the......thingamajiggy, the part between the housing and lens assembly.(see I can't think) The material isn't leather but light reflects about the same as black leather. Any ideas on settings for specular on this? Also, there is a trick for casting shadows without light. I know you set up your light then copy it and then.............? Thanks for the help!
ThirdEye
06-22-2003, 04:13 PM
If you're using no lights at all how would you expect to have speculars? :shrug: Nice modeling and shading so far tho! :thumbsup:
Tugmaster
06-22-2003, 04:29 PM
ThirdEye, this shot doesn't have the lighting it's just to show the section of the camera I'm talking about but I've been test rendering with different light setups without success. I will use one light for specular and one for shadow. Maybe it's the texture I need to work on or change?
basilisk
06-22-2003, 06:30 PM
Perhaps you mean bellows?
Love these old cameras, and my guess is that the bellows must be made from calf hide or something, to be that flexible.

Anyway, I think the problem with your specular highlights is not down to material particularly, but the model and the lights. To produce good specular highlights a model needs to to have edges and corners that are curved or bevelled, but not too curved. The smaller the curve the sharper (but smaller) the highlight, until it vanishes altogether on a sharp edge (in real life no edge is as sharp as the edge of a cg box). Also you need to use lots of lights (try using an array object to create a ring of 7 or 8 lights around the object) so that you get specular highlights that show from many angles (a specular highlight appears on those parts of the surface where the angle of the light to the surface exactly mirrors the angle of surface from the viewer - with one light there will not be a lot of points at which this is true). A slight bump map in the texture (try cranal noise for leather) helps with catching the light creating "mini highlights" around the main highlights.
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