Comments: More Final 3D

Nice detailing on the handle.
The following are tips on materials, that if you already know or plan to add I apologize. But I suspect something might be insightful, and I always enjoy talking about 3d anyway.

If you're not doing so, the glass and metal materials should be using the appropriate shaders. For the glass, use a raytrace shader with a transparency set to 100%, and an index of refraction between 1.5-1.7. The shader to use for the metal depends on what type of metal it's representing. If it's chrome or a mirror, then a raytrace shader should work. However, there are metal shaders for other metals (MAYA should have one)

Metal and glass usually reflect their environment. You can either set the raytrace material to relect the environment around it (should be the default setting) or you can assign an arbitrary environment texture map as the materials reflection map (e.g. a 360 panoramic image of a sundown or a room. Or you can use a large image of an environment and blend it's edges so that when it tiles you don't see a seam). The environment texture map should be set to spherical mapping since you're basically simulating a surrounding environment for the material to reflect. Or, you can just build a room around the magnify glass for it to truly reflect!

If the handle is glossy, it'll need the same relection map, though with a reflectance setting of 30% or so. If it's not smooth, the handle could use a bump map. Finally, make sure your renderer has refraction and reflection raytracing enabled.

Posted by Brad at January 31, 2004 4:46 PM

Ahhhhh, you're exporting to Director...yeeeah...Then nothing I've mentioned will export. >_<

Posted by Brad at February 1, 2004 10:54 AM
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