What is wrong with my model/rendering

I’ve created a little animaton to test view some mechanical parts I’ve been modelling in blender, but it doesn’t look good at all. I can’t tell if something is wrong with the modelled shapes, the details, the materials and textures(all procedural), the lighting )although that is really just set up as a quick global lighting rig to provide some illumination for the animation.

This isn’t a finished piece, nor a draft of one, just a test of how the parts will look in motion. But it really doesn’t look right so I could use some tips on improving it.

The animation depicts the loading mechanism of a hard sci-fi railgun, the yellow mechanical “arm” lifts shells from a gap in a rotating carousel magazine and places them into the breach of the railgun, a rod then pushes them forward ready to be fired and protective doors close to seal off the firing chamber between the rails from the loading equipment and breach. The arm returns to a safe vertical position then the barrel is flung back* by the recoil, returns to it’s original position and the loading cycle repeats. Every fourth cycle the carousel makes a turn to bring another 4 shells into place for the arm to reach them. The camera in the animation dances around all over the place to show off the detials of the mechanism as much as possible.

For a sense of scale the shells (dark grey penetrator core in a light coloured meta sabot) being lifted into the breach by the mechanical arm is 9.5x9.5 cm in cross section and 59cm in length.

I am satisfied with the animated motions and with the overall concepts and large scale shapes of the parts, my issue is with the fine details and lack thereof and the way that they don’t seem to look “right”. Would a change of texture fix this, but then I wouldn’t think this breach should get particularly dirty so I’m not sure how much procedural grime I can justify? Do I need to alter all the edges in some way, or add even finer detail? Or am I only having problems with the way it looks (I want it to look like a real mechanical part which has been treated well across several years of operational use) due to poor lighting and overly fast camera movements in this test video.

Thank you

*it is flung back too fast to see it moving backward, this comes from calculations about how much recoil the gun would feel if it were a real object, so you only see the barrel moving forward again into position to reload because the 2 metres of distance backward rush of the barrel under recoil takes only about 2 frames at 24fps.

One thing to consider would be making some normal maps. Basically you just duplicate the mesh, go into sculpt mode on the duplicate, turn on dynamic topology, and then add some details like dents, scratches, and craters on the edges. Then you can use the high res sculpted model to bake a normal map onto the original. You can find out how to do this in one of the last videos in Andrew Price’s anvil tutorials.

Then you could also try changing the lighting. I imagine a scene like this should have just one light per camera angle, and it should be a really hard light. You can change the hardness of a lamp by making it decreasing its size value. Hard light brings out the details in things, which would probably be a good look for this scene, especially if you do add some normal maps.

Your problem here is twofold. The first is, despite color, all your materials look like they’re the exact same material, ant that material is a dull industrial plastic, at best. I suspect most of the parts are intended to be some kind of metal. A metallic material’s color comes entirely from its reflections (I know it doesn’t sound right, but it’s true; it’s all in how even the surface is on a very small level). This tends to make a sharper contrast between the highlights and the rest of the material, even with the most diffuse-like metals. Your more colorful sections are likely to be painted over (or encased in plastic), in which case, they should remain somewhat diffuse, save where the plastic or paint has worn away or been chipped.

Your second problem is that it’s too clean. Even the most well-maintained piece of machinery will have some grime, as most need some type of lubricant and/or coolant to function optimally. And oil (the more common lubricant, although there are many others in growing favor) plus dirt (entirely unavoidable, especially since I imagine this has to shoot the ammunition somewhere, which leaves an opening for such to enter) equals grime. Even if you went so far as to argue it being only a demonstration in perfect laboratory conditions (an entirely reasonable argument), you would still have scratches from simple handling and construction where the pieces where made wherever they were made and then transported to said lab for assembly–even if it was a fabricator a few rooms away.

In short, even if all you did was to add a bit of abrasion via displacement with some combination of in-house cloud textures throttled by a pointiness node, it would improve this animation 100%

Freelix2000:
I’ll look around for that anvil tutorial anmd see if it has useful tips. My lights are suns at present and they are set up to give fairly uniform illumination.

ArtisticLee:
The parts are indeed supposed to be metal. I’ve been using blender internal, I don’t think I can “throttle with a pintless node”? As for cloud textures there are some in place already but you’re right that it still looks too clean, how should I alter it to make the textures stand out more, and which options for cloud textures (hard/soft, voronoi/blender orig/perlin…) should be used?

My problem with this I can’t follow the action, I don’t know what is going where. It cuts to another part of the machine and you ask where is this what part am I looking at? A few wide shots would help, don’t materialize the camera in some nook without making it clear where you have relocated the camera.

not ArtsisticLee but SWITCH OUT OF INTERNAL ASAP. It is dead, learn Cycles. Cycles has the node setup he was talking about. Cycles is the only real way to get PBR materials.

Add a bevel modifier for all parts with a small bevel radius. It will give the corners a more natural look.