Shading The One Ring

[kiaran]

You're going to have a very hard time getting realistic reflections and such using an anistropic shader. And you look into using HDRI to light your scene instead of ambient light.

Here is a great tutorials on using Mental Ray to render using HDRI's. I've had great success with this method.

HDRI in Mental Ray TUTORIAL (http://www.3dluvr.com/intercepto/maya/tutorials/mray_thegathering/hdri.htm)

Cheers,
Kiaran

[pyromania]

Ansio shaders just don't have enough specular highlights for shiny metal. You should try using a blinn of phong shader, these have mush stronger highlights.

The black park must be a reflection from somewhere. Possibly, from maya's default background color. Is the ring in a sealed cube or is it open somewhere.

For the lighting, I don't think just one light will cut it. Try having the ambient light and a couple point lights in the scene. Or use HDRI like kiaran said.

[McDonut]

Hey guys, thank for your time, about the lightning, the ambient light is just for testing now, as is the scene, when I've finished the ring and have its environment ready, I'm gonna try some GI, and maybe HDRI...thx for the link.

pyromania:
I'll try it with a blinn shader, but these black parts are bothering me. I got a sealed cube, so it's not the bg color thats reflecting, I thought it might be that the ring is reflecting itself and its not getting calculated right, or something.

[Marcel]

GI will not be very important for shading the ring. Since it is almost 100% reflective the shadows won't have much influence on it. It might be nice to have GI lighting on the enviroment though.

Like suggested before in this thread, be sure to check out HDRI for the reflections, it'll improve your reflections a lot! You need 'real' reflections (raytraced), it might be best to turn the blinn/phong highlight completely off.

[McDonut]

Thanks, like I said before I'm really bad in shading/lightning, I focused on modelling until now. I'll make sure I'll try all of your suggestion when the time comes to light that baby up.

For now, please help me get rid of these darn black spots, or understand where they might be comin from. I'm stumped.

Also, if someone could give me some ideas on how to make the actual glow effect, I'd appreciate it. I understand I have a transparent image with the red writing on it - besides my bump map - which I put on a shader. What next? Do I make that shader glow already and then make a layered texture with the ring material and the glow material? Also, will the shader only glow on nontransparent parts of the texture?

[McDonut]

Okay, I read up on HDRI and that looks really great. Guess my black spots would be gone, too. I'll try that out right now. How would one create his own HDRI's, since there are not too many out there, me thinks.

[DiGiman]

www.debevec.org/HDRShop/

That little website explains it all. You can even D/L some nice images from there as well. But creating your own HDRI images is a long process. You need a mirrored ball, and a nice digital camera.

[McDonut]

Hi guys, sorry to bring this up again, but I need your help.

I've been experimenting with HDRI, Final Gather and GI, the results looked really cool, but I can't get rid of these darn black spots you see in the first post.

I'm pretty sure these are reflections of the ring itself. Take a look at this pic.

http://www.3dluvr.com/intercepto/maya/tutorials/mray_thegathering/images4/01_hdri4.jpg
edit: sry, cant seem to link directly to the image, goto http://www.3dluvr.com/intercepto/maya/tutorials/mray_thegathering/hdri.htm, and look at the final render...

When an object gets reflected in another object, only the color gets reflected. You dont see the reflection of the objects in the reflection of the object you're looking at. I hope I'm still making sense :p.

I think the same thing is happening with my ring, only that it reflects itself, and as the color is almost black, I get black reflections.
Do you have any ideas how to handle that?

[DiGiman]

Thats a good question....
I have noticed the same thing on my renders.
Anyway, you should try to adjust the Max reflection rays, and/or the Max ray depth, under the General tab in the Mental Ray Render global settings.

Anyway, let us know what you find out

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