im working on a heavy space fighter of my own design, i have the general texture layout more or less done but when i render it, its still rather lacking.
the ship doesn’t give off that metallic feel but more of a wall inside a house.
what can i do to make the ship actually feel like its made of metal, what are my options
It depends since I really can’t see a screenshot of your ship, it’s hard to tell. I would direct you towards rendering with a specular map, if you weren’t already using one. Even the generic specular option in the XSI lights can work decently for that.
This is just kind of an example of how I’ve used the specular option in the lights, to produce that effect on one of my meshes…
It’s not perfect, and the more smooth your geometry the better it shows up as well. I’m not sure if that was quite what you’re going for, but you’ll just have to try some stuff out to see.
Make sure you remove all other lights in your scene. If you’re not using modtool versions of Softimage you should have full range of abilities in lighting. As long as you position your camera in the right spot and have your lighting properties set accordingly it should help reduce the dullness you’re wanting to avoid.
^ Something kinda like this might help give the visuals you want ^
Both your texture and mesh will also have things to play with this too. If you have a smooth high poly mesh, with less shading issues, that will boost your visuals tremendously. I’d recommend looking up some video lessons on different modeling techniques in XSI. I know it helped me a ton when I took time to figure out some different methods.
In the end, knowing more about increasing mesh, lighting, and texture quality will help you overcome this.
right now i just have some standard light, i never really learned how to make the extra effects.
what kind of tutorial should i look for that would give me the best effects that im looking for, like what was just shown to me before.
The best tutorial resources (that I know of personally) would be that of Digital Tutors, although they come with a subscription price. Since I usually have taken lessons exclusively from them it’s hard for me to direct to other free online sites. http://www.digitaltutors.com/software/Softimage-tutorials
Maybe another society goer might have some good suggestions?
Just starting with the basics and working your way up is the best way I think. Either way you’ll have to make the decision as to what you wanna start looking into. I can only give what I think might be a good suggestion.
hummm what should i google then?
what would be the best wording/phrase that should give me the best results?