mesht

i seem to have this problem of rendering a convincing stainless steel material in my scenes. i use the max's architectural materials and rendered using mental ray, but it turns out very dark grey.

i also have use a preset steel material, and still doesn't look like a brushed stainless steel. could it be with the materials setting?

Tim Nelson

It could be either the settings or the reflection environment. Without anything to reflect, stainless steel will be nothing but a flat shade of gray.

What works best for me is the have a very high anistropy, either vertically or horizontally, and a very sharp reflection value to get those nice streaky highlights you seen in the real world. I also sometimes use a small wave bump amount to give a little variation to the reflections.

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Tim Nelson
timnelson3d.com

luckytohaveher

I had the same problem a couple of years ago.

Create a light grey metal material, start with a max standard if you like.

Use a noise map for diffuse, specular, ambient, and bump with a setting of about 30 or so for the bump value. For the noise map place the 'levels' setting at about 2-3. Then make the mapping 1 tile in the x direction and 4 to 6 in the y direction.

That should do it. It is the 6 to 1 aspect ratio that will make it look good. If you really want to get tricky use the same map for the reflection map with a value of 20-40 (if you have the time)...

Good day.

mesht

thanks guys for your tips

see how it goes