I'm happy with the model, but the render looks like it's monochrome. Any suggestions?

You need some more "stuff" to reflect in the environment. Or a reflection map... an environment map. With some color in it... it screams for some "blue"... just a touch.

I often use a big dome with a blurred image to reflect in chrome... I have found that an envrionment map works good to... but I like the control of a dome... I sometimes put in long "shapes" to break up the reflections. Really long white and dark "card" mesh shapes that give those long streaky reflections in the chrome surface.

Lighting could be just a touch "brighter"... and some "glistening" specular highlights.

It does look a bit... dull... and monochrome... but still... it looks pretty good. Most times you wouldn't be able to tell it was chrome... it is definitely chromey.

Vernon "!" Zehr

i take it you never got the environment maps to work? Your rims will look fine once you get that up and working.

also... for chrome, you should have speculary size at 13%, and specular intensity to 830%. Reflectivity should be 100%, and color should be pure white. That's what i believe the settings are... or it could have been pure black... i dont remember. K, hope that helps. And put the environment map collin made on it

Funny you mention that Dan...

Sometimes... most times actually... I use almost all black (like 98%) for chrome... but...

sometimes I have found when using an environment map image for the reflection map I can get away with a really light color... I should be consistent I guess...

Most people say DARK for metal or chrome... like... experts say this... so... probably they know better.

In this image:

http://www.lowrestv.com/lowres/portfolio/i...kull_final2.jpg

I used a dark almost black color for the metal skull and a reflected image in a dome...

but used a light color with an environment map for the chrome eye piece fittings... the one that looks like a video connector... I believe all the screws and bolts used that same material as well... I believe it had a high diffuse falloff... but I can't remember exactly.

The skull uses the dome for the reflection... the connector uses mostly the environment map... don't ask me why I did this... I think it just looked better... as I recall... the environment map was one I "borrowed" from the model of the connector off of Animation Pitstop... and I really liked the "lines" of demarkation it produced on the chrome. It didn't work as well on the skull... and visa versa.

Vernon "!" Zehr

Ok, used all of your input with much better results. However, still needs some work and more input.

Here are the settings:

Yves 20 light rig at 7% intensity
One large sun light at 83% intensity
A Dome with a sky gradient, cast shadows off, receive shadows off

The wheel model has properties of:
Diffuse color: RGB 56,63,88 a very dark blue
Falloff : 400%
Spec Size : 22% with 824% intensity
Reflectivity : 90%
and an Environmental map with 75% opacity

Ground:
same color as model
Diffuse falloff : 0
Ambiant intensity : 0

Now, as the pic shows, the chrome is a bit bright. I'm not sure if it's the reflectivity, the specular size/intensity, or the sun light intensity.

What say you to be the next changes to produce a perfect render??

As a final note, the environmental map doesn't seem to show up as far as I can tell. The reflection in the chrome seems to consist of the floor and the sky reflection from the dome. What happened to the E-map on the model???

at the moment... it looks like your rims chrome look is spot on. I dont think you need to adjust any of the settings. Very nice render.

Ok, just apply this matterial to your chrome group. Destroy your sky dome. Remove all properties from your chrome group. Make sure that the uffizi.tga is in the list of images, and that the environment map atribute in the material is linked to uffizi.tga. Hope this works for ya, and if it dont, i'll help you even further.

You should use either environment map or reflectivity but not both. Environment maps is a cheap but very efficient trick to simulate reflectivity. If you use both, they will interfere and you will likely get unconvincing results. Personally, I don't use environment maps. Not enough controls for my tastes. I like to use reflectivity and map a sky environment onto the skydome. By sky environment, I mean the whole thing: Sky with clouds plus buildings and/or trees, etc. That is the best way to get nice chrome effects. See this tin girl for an example of the result of such a setup.

Dan:

Your'e killin me!! Destroy my skydome, remove my hard wrought chrome material?? Ugh! But...for all your help, I will experiment with what you suggest. The file you posted has four parts, Chrome, Metal brosse, reflection, and the e-map. What is the Metal brosse for?

Yves:

So that explains why I was getting some very weird results when I was using both reflectivity and an E-map. I also got some very dark results when I put two reflective materials on a model. I'm gonna do a test with a simple model and various setups to compare what happens.

I've had almost no experience with applying an environment to a skydome, would you please give me a summary of the steps to take?

One more render with a few tweaks.

well, you dont have to change what you have now. it looks fine now... but the skydome you got is lacking a whole lot of detail. Colins environment map has a lot of stuff in it, but... like yves said... it is rather unrealistic.

I realy like your tire set up.

You need a sphere model that will serve as the skydome. Set its ambiance to 100%.

You also need a 360° x 360° panoramic photo. Some examples can be found at Greg Downing Web site but I find his photos rather dark. Look in "Panoramic Photos". There are some other places where you can get true 360° x 360° photos but they are rare. What you will find more easily are 360° wide but not 360° high photos such as the Brisbane Pan Project. Another alternative is the 1000 Skies Web sites which offers several 360° x 180° sky maps which you must use on a half sphere.

You create a new material and change its type to Projection Map and select one of the 360° x 360° photo.

You drop the material onto the sphere model.

You drop the dome model in the choreography. You now have a skydome which can be reflected off your reflective objects in your scene.

Voilà.

The new tire looks good. For renders without any environment, I suggest using the environment maps. Just have two materials. One with the environment map, and one that has chrome reflections.

Did you model all of those grooves in the tire?

This thread has been super with everyone's input and help. Thank you all. I did a final render that I am happy with. The chrome settings are pretty much what I started with. The big difference came with the map I used on the dome. This was done before I read the last post from you Yves, thank you. I will render one more time with your instructions on mapping the dome, but I think it looks pretty good so far. The ground is supposed to be a rock material. Not too good.

All in all, I do like the dome with the projection map better than adding an environmental map to a material.

The center cap now shows the decal that did not render in the other pics. I got it to render by removing the underlying cp's from the chrome group.

No, Matt, I didn't model the threads, I used a decal once as a bump map and then as a diffuse filter.

On to the next part of the S7

Those pictures are amazing yves. How do you make them? I think i may go that rout for the retro.

I've been trying for a while to get the effect of High Dynamic Range Lighting with the panoramic pictures on a projection map that has transulcency. I'm using Yves's skylights on a half down. I've gotten some results, but they don't look good. The effects I'm trying to get are illustrated on this thread:

HDR Lighting

This guy uses a reflective sphere to get the lighting for a shot. These guys are using 3d studio max with modesl imported from the game Half-Life 2.

The same thing can be implemented on these tires or even the cars if anyone knows how to get this to work.

Here a good example of what I'm trying to say from the thread:

These pictures are incredible if these are really cg models and not a guy in a cheap spacesuit. Since I have no reason to doubt that these are renders other than my eyes, I reaffirm, absolutely stunning and realistic. Gonna have to research this a bit.

The usual way is to take a set of photos of different part of the same environment from the same point of view and then use a photo stitcher program to produce the panoramic image.
See .Auto Stitch for a free photo stitcher and instruction on how this is done.