Need material advice - Is this metal?

Rhav

Hey! I was in the middle of texturing a lamp post on substance painter, my goal is to reach photorealism, so being as close as possible to my REFs is vital. 
My problem is that i can't really tell if the lower part is metal or not.
The part i'm talking about is circled in red:




The reflections suggests me that it could be a metallic material, but i when i try to texture it in substance, it doesn't really give me the same vibes. Maybe it's painted metal? Meaning that it shouldn't have a metallic value?

I also noticed the differences between this part and the higher one (the "head" of the lamp) which i concluded could be a type of hard plastic.

So what do you think? is it metal? Should it have a value of 1 in the metallic scale while i texture it?

Thanks for your time

Eric Chadwick

Looks like painted metal to me (metal screws being used to secure it). So, zero metalness.

The reflection is probably fresnel in action, because glossy dielectrics (non-metals) have full reflections at glancing angles.

Rhav

Hey, thank you for your answer! I see that you think this is not a metal on the surface, this is quite reassuring, since i also thought that. 
I made some reaserch on lamp posts and i only found general information, obviously all street lamps are different, and finding information on this specific one was kinda hard.

Then i remembered i have an uncle who's an electrician, and i asked him if he knew what materials where used to make that part. He said that lamppost are generally made with either alluminium, hard plastic, or fiberglass.

Fiberglass was a big news, so i searched for it and found very similar risults
(I dont know why they are colored like the italian flag, hurray italy i guess)
Right now i'm trying to reproduce this to see if it resemples the original effect. I'm also trying with experiment with coating a bit, but i don't think that's the answer.

Also, i saw you mentioned fresnel, which is something i though about, but i can't really see where to "activate" it in substance, i suppose i can't.

poopipe

Thats almost certainly painted sheet steel - I'm not sure if it's galvanised but it will certainly have some sort of rust protection under the paint 
It's got rust in places where the protection has scraped off so we know it's ferrous - that excludes aluminium and fibreglass and since steel is the cheapest and most sensible ferrous option ... 

The fresnel Eric mentioned is a property of the material so it's not something you set directly. 

All materials are perfect mirrors when viewed from an angle parallel to the surface* and the closer you get to looking parallel to the surface the more reflective they get - the rate is determined by the specular reflectance value of the material.
In the case of this material you can stick with the default metallic/roughness setup and it will be fine. 

(*you can't actually look at a surface from a perfectly parallel angle because you'd have to be inside it)

gnoop

In actual game  the choice may depend on  texel size.  I doubt it would  be something  hi res enough to hide metal vs non-metal  halos   which could turn the whole thing into  a mess.  On mip drops especially.    So I would do the pole metal and  the whole lamp dielectric.   Whatever wearing paint  patches/ scratches  it has.  In fact even the pole itself a bit half-metal.