Max Material help

TheKrug3r

Hello, I am new to this forum so excuse me if I posted in the wrong area or anything.

I have a question that seems that it should be extremely simple to answer but I can't figure it out. I've made a model, a robot, and I want a very simple metal material on the entire thing. Something like this:



It isn't washed out, only reflects bright lights, shows plenty of the details with exaggerated shadows. I can't for the life of me even get close to it. It's for my final project in Intro to 3D Modeling and I have all the modeling done but my metal material looks like crap.

I would hugely appreciate any help that could show me how to set up a material like this because I don't have the time before it's due to learn how to properly unwrap it and find dozens of textures when it can look pretty with a single material.

Eric Chadwick

Your picture isn't showing up.

Here's a tutorial that might help you.
http://www.artemstudios.com/2010/tutorials/material/MaterialRenderingTut.htm

You can add more visual interest to an un-textured model by adding a reflection map, and using a Falloff map to mask it for a fresnel effect. Very sexy. I'll look for an example image to show you what I mean.

Eric Chadwick

Marmoset Toolbag is excellent for rendering models like this.
http://www.marmoset.co/toolbag/learn/skytool

XoliulShader has some great examples of using a reflection map with fresnel. Laurens also provides some good cubemaps you can download.
http://www.laurenscorijn.com/viewportshader

Mark Dygert

Eric listed some great resources, also check out the materials section of Neil Blevins site (about a 3rd of the way down the page). His approach to dissecting materials is a good frame work to use when confronted by "how do I create this material".

http://www.neilblevins.com/cg_education/cg_education.htm