Non reflective textures on a chrome material questions

SummonedSpirit

Hey guys,

I'm currently in the process of making a showerhead. The showerhead is stainless steel and is highly reflective which has given me some problem regarding the holes where the water sprays out. Those shouldn't look reflective and should be made in normals to look like holes.

Is there a method to keep the holes none reflective/transparent on a single material?

Obscura

Is this PBR?
Whats the renderer?

If so, to make them non reflective, you can paint black in the metallic map, or if you use the specular method, use lower specular value.

About the transparent thing, depending on the application, I'd suggest to separate them into an another material. 

SummonedSpirit

Obscura said:

Is this PBR?
Whats the renderer?

If so, to make them non reflective, you can paint black in the metallic map, or if you use the specular method, use lower specular value.

About the transparent thing, depending on the application, I'd suggest to separate them into an another material. 

i'm currently using maya with mental ray  not sure what PBR means I see it a lot is it some type of shading technique a renderer use?

Obscura

So first you should look up whats pbr and it will also answer your question about how to make things "less reflective".

SummonedSpirit

Obscura said:

So first you should look up whats pbr and it will also answer your question about how to make things "less reflective".

Gotcha, last question Obs thanks so much for taking time to answer all of this. Is a normal map absolutely necessary for every texture? I know its one of the most important ones but are there instances where a normal map is not useful for a set of textures for the mesh?

Anchang-Style

well if you just use a flat steel map a normal map shouldn't really be necessary, considering that those kind of materials don't have details. 

Obscura

That would really depend on the art style, and what your client/art director asks for. If they want this hand painted, stylized look, you probably won't have any normalmap. Also normal maps can be treated in different ways, depending on the project specs. There are some methods that doesn't involve baking a normalmap, but as I said, the answer to this whole question highly depends on what are the requirements.

SummonedSpirit

understood guys, right now its a personal project i'm doing but i'm also considering selling the assets to a 3d marketplace to make up for some of the time i've spent on this. So i'm also keeping in mind how i can keep it as presentable as possible to a customer as well.

musashidan

The offline renderers(mentalray/vray/etc) do use pbr/pbs, and have been for over a decade. It's just different shading models. The latest derivative is Disney pbr which the games industry has adopted wholeheartedly.

Mentalray uses reflection/glossiness. glossiness being the opposite of roughness.

for a detailed offline model you might model the holes as geo or use a displacement map

for a realtime model you might paint black in the albedo/metal map and use a normal map for depth.

it really depends on your target medium/customers. If it is for realtime then you would be better off rendering using a game engine and the Disney pbr(as that is now the industry standard)

SummonedSpirit

musashidan said:

The offline renderers(mentalray/vray/etc) do use pbr/pbs, and have been for over a decade. It's just different shading models. The latest derivative is Disney pbr which the games industry has adopted wholeheartedly.

Mentalray uses reflection/glossiness. glossiness being the opposite of roughness.

for a detailed offline model you might model the holes as geo or use a displacement map

for a realtime model you might paint black in the albedo/metal map and use a normal map for depth.

it really depends on your target medium/customers. If it is for realtime then you would be better off rendering using a game engine and the Disney pbr(as that is now the industry standard)

gotcha musa, so add the holes to a disaplacement map then? i'll also be preparing it for unreal engine but it needs to work in maya too