Making a Surface Shiny?
wile_e_coyote930_c886060b2c
Posts: 11
I have a pair of boots that came with a full texture, but for the particular scene I'm working on I just want to make them black, with a faint shine as if they're made of leather. I selected them, went to Surfaces (Color) -> Editor, removed the default texture and set the diffuse color to a very dark gray that's close to black. Glossiness is set to 100%. But when I try to render them, they're still completely matte, and look more like rubber than leather. What else do I need to do? Or is it even actually possible to do this?
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Now, if you want other shiney surfaces, such as painted or metal, there are other shaders, you can use as well. These include the Super Shine Shader Pack, the Super Shine Top Coat (for when you want to keep the extiting texture, but want the added shine), and the Ultimate Shader pack.
Also remember that if you want reflections, you either need an environment to reflect or a reflection map to fake it.
I'm not really looking for a "leathery" effect, so not having a bump map isn't a big deal. I'm just trying to make them look like something a soldier would wear--dark, but with a little bit of a shine to them where they catch the light.
If you check out these series of screenshots, the one on the left is how they look when I'm moving around and posing the scene, and that's really the effect I'm looking for. But when I render them, they look they way they do in the center pic. If I start turning reflection strength up, I get the result you see on the right.
I have Specular Color, Ambient Color, Reflection Color, and Refraction color all set to 255-255-255, and I think everything else are the defaults. Should I be using different colors? Would a screenshot showing all of my settings help? (Remember, the fact that I'm in this section of the forum and this is my 2nd post means I'm still a total noob at this stuff... :D )
A screenshot of your parameter settings would probably help. TrampGraphics suggested changing the glossiness, what value did you pick for that? You might experiment by changing it a lot and doing a quick spot render just to see the effect (default is 100, try 70% or even 50% just to see what it does, then adjust to your liking.)
Yes, a screenshot would be very helpful.
Glossiness actually works the opposite way to what you would expect with 100 percent full matt and 0 percent full glossy. Strange eh.
The glossiness setting should be at around 60 percent with specular strength at roughly 80 percent. Play around with these two settings until it starts looking the way you want. Adding a https://nomeradona.files.wordpress.com/2009/05/leather_specmap.jpg;https://nomeradona.wordpress.com/resources/resources-and-download/;1024;1024" target="_blank">leather texture map to the specular strength setting will help to give the effect.
Remember also that lighting will play a large part in the appearance of a glossy surface.
Edit: To remove Percentage signs which broke post
That's exactly what the problem was! I had glossiness set to 100 percent, when actually the lower you set it the glossier it gets. Wow, they really oughta take a look at renaming that, or flipping the slider settings.
Thanks for your help, everyone!
That's exactly what the problem was! I had glossiness set to 100 percent, when actually the lower you set it the glossier it gets. Wow, they really oughta take a look at renaming that, or flipping the slider settings.
Thanks for your help, everyone!
No, it's not really working in reverse...it just seems that way. Nothing is 100 percent glossy...at 100 percent the specular highlight is so small/tight that it doesn't appear to exist...but if you look very closely, you'll spot a small, very white spot, right in the middle of the left boot, around the ankle. There's also a bit wider spot, on the toe of the left boot. Another small one on the right boot.
Those are roughly akin to focusing all the light reflecting off the boot through a magnifying glass. Lowering the amount spreads those highlights out, making them appear more natural.
Mjc is right,
A High gloss object will tend to have tighter specular highlights, with it spreading out the more matt the surface becomes. It just seems a little confusing when you think very glossy and set Glossiness to 100 and you see no specular highlights at all.
So Specular Strength controls the Strength/density of the Specular Highlight.
Glossiness Controls the Tightness of the Specular Highlight, a lower percentage is larger/looser with a high percentage tighter/smaller to the point where a 100 percent setting its so small it's barely visible (If it is visible). I guess it comes down to how the terminology is applied. Its a case of where there is more of something the effect size is smaller. So higher gloss means smaller highlights.
Razor and Mjc are correct, The higher the number, the glossier the object, the tighter the highlight.
As for the leather, even if you're looking for a "military" high gloss boot look, you still need that leather bump map. As a US Army veteran, I can tell you that military boots did still have grain. They were leather, and looked like leather. Yes, the polish filled in that grain to a point, thus providing the "spit shine", but the boots still had grain, so you do need the leather bump map. The trick for the high gloss sections of the leather (such as the toe) is lower the min and max values in the Bump strength. (about -/+ .01 should do). It should also be noted that we only wore high gloss boots while on base, not in the field. In the field, our boots were to be kept dull, to prevent the shine from giving away our positions to the enemy. Thus, the grain would most certainly be apparent.
Modern military combat boots are tan swede, so they don't get polished at all.