how to make a chrome texture

gsimpson91

hey guys, im trying to make a chrome texture on part of an object using 3ds max and photoshop ( the handle and latch to a toolbox) and I just cant figure out how to make it look like chrome, someone told me to use a dark diffuse color and light spec map but thats not working, should use a reflectivity map and how to I isolate the reflections to the specific uv space? thanks alot, any advice or links to tutorials would be great the only tutorials i can find are one sto make the whole object chrome.

kodde

Chrome has a quite dark base color If I'm not mistaking. It's all about the reflections when it comes to chrome. Unless you are going for some specific hand painted style of visuals you probably want to look into getting reflections on your chrome surface.

Here's an example image I'm using in a project I'm working on. Similar to what you probably want to look at.

Zipfinator

There was a thread on this a while back I think. For the chrome part, use a very dark gray, almost black. Then have it very light on that area in the specular map, nearly white.

To have other areas not be reflective just make them black in your specular map.

gsimpson91

ya that what im going for, i cant figure out how to isolate the uv's for the latch and handle and make just them reflective, cuz its on the same texture sheet as the rest of the toolbox, i know how to apply an image for the reflection but it affects the whole thing. as far as i can tell its not like an opacity map where you can use a black / white scale to affect opacity intensity in certain areas .. unless im missing something in the material editor where you can apply that map.

gsimpson91

k thanks Zipfinator i'll try that

kodde

gsimpson91> What material/shader are you using? Many popular shaders or engines on these boards have options to mask your reflection results with a reflectivity texture.

gsimpson91

i've applied my diffuse texture as a bitmap, as well as the specular map, as for the reflectivity, all the tutorials ive seen have gone through the raytrace tab but that doesn't have an option to apply a map to exclude areas in which you don't want reflective.. im not sure if things is what your asking or not im still kind of a beginner to all this

kodde

This might be a bit over the top for you if you aren't already familiar with shading and texture concepts. But you gotta start somewhere right?

Here are some alternatives to what you are already using. You can find many good game like real-time shaders there which will let you use reflections and mask their effect.
http://wiki.polycount.com/CategoryShaders

gsimpson91

k thanks for the help man, i'll give those a look over see if i cant figure it out.. im determined to learn this

gsimpson91

ohh wow, so i figured it out.. now i feel like such a retard, there is a little checkbox under "basic material extensions" in the raytrace tab which allowes you to put in a opacity mask for the reflectivity.. cant believe i missed that, thansk alot for the help though, i checked out some of those shaders, pretty cool im definately gonna give those a try too

kodde

Nice. Good to hear you found a solution.
What you are using sounds like a common offline render technique for reflections. The shaders I linked to are most likely real-time shaders using cheaper methods but at blazing speeds compared to raytracing. In other words, the technique you are speaking of takes longer to render but should produce better results and the linked shaders do it in fractions of a second but with not as good accuracy. The later being more like what you go for in games.