Thanks everyone and sorry about the late response.
IĀm super busy.
Miguel:
Thanks. No mforge. The green texture is a repeated scan of the actual product texture plus my first real attempts at a metallic material.
David:
I initially played with the Anistropic shader but couldnĀt get the hang of it. Specifically, I couldnĀt see much difference when using it. I plan to play with it again and get the effect down. I probably went about things all wrong. First I used one of your small Studio HDRIs and rendered the animation, taking advantage of the new Glossy GI feature and the same small HDRI as an RT Reflection. I decided later that I should have used lower brightness settings and an additional conventional light with fallof on the right side. Rather than re-render (it took 30 hours for 150 frames on my Power PC imac), I did a quick render of another light on a black camera and added the lighting in AE. Then I tweaked everything like hell to arrive at the current result. Aliasing increased in some of the specs, which I found difficult to get right with Glossy GI in the first place. Various details like the lens parts, lens flares, glass, and logos were also rendered separately and added/tweaked in AE. It was quite a learning experience with errors in judgement that I hope not to repeat.
Reuben:
Thanks. IĀm not sure that IĀll be touching up this test animation any more. But I may start using the same model for a more interesting animation. If so, IĀll strive to improve the look and will post my efforts. I may also get ahold of Mforge. Am I right that it doesnĀt work with the Anistropic Shader? Does it work well with GI, Glossy GI specs, and RT reflection?
Thanks again everyone.
Jim Mulcahy