Well I havnt been on this site in a while, and I havnt had time to mess with blender any in almost a year so I forgot alot of the things I learned and I am having trouble with a project I started and I am trying to finish up.
Basically this is supposed to be a test ground for textures before I went made all the models for the 7 swords, that way I could feel whether or not I could go about the task and it look ok. So this is just suppost to be zacks sword in the ground with some grass. But I cannot get it to look right. The ends of the handle are transparent but are suppost to be a dull gold color and the blade texture is to dark and I cant figure out why. Also the brass is to dark also and agian I cant figure it out.
I see the problem with the blue and gold at the ends of the handle: the ray mirror effects on them are way high, and are completely reflecting the background color. Turn them down and change the background color; I like white or black, because they’re simple, but it doesn’t matter; it still just has to do with reflection settings.
Metals are much easier to make if you use a Toon diffuse shader. Raytracing can become very costly on your cpu but toon shading spits right out. Just dont use any edge settingsand you’ll get metal.
Is this a bit closer to what you were shooting for? If so I’ll upoload a Blend so you can have a look at the settings.
btw: a saturated white background is a no-no when you’re trying to adjust color. Gradients work fairly well but 50% gray is ideal because it will not play against any of the other colors in your scene so that you get a true feel for what all of the materrials and textures are actually doing to each other.
Edit: Also turning on AO really brought out a lot of contrast and livened the scene up. Oh, and the blade is going to continue to have that flat look until you add some conture or texture, possibly via a nor map.
Anyway, that question comes up so often yet it is an impossible task to give an easy answer to it. Good looking Metal is hard to achieve. Here are some points which you could look at, going from “RamboBaby”'s work:
Polished, cromish metal needs something to reflect, one of the major points many people miss. That’s why HDRI’s work so well with shiny and reflective stuff. Or in Blender, similar things can be achieved with a simple Texture mapped to the Refl channel - something which is easily overlooked but gives nice and quick results.
Textures and bump maps obviously help a lot as well. Without them, the flat look will remain, as mentioned before.
Lighting can’t be overlooked either. It is a very important aspect of any image and will decide if your image is a winner.
The last thing is experimentation…screw around until you’re satisfied or give up
