realistic plastic

Hi i'm trying to get a realistic plastic look for a lighter. Been trying lot's of things and i just cant get it right. Does anyone have any suggestions or a good tutorial?
thanks.

here you can see the picture im working on http://www.threedy.com/site/forum/showthread.php?p=317320#post317320

You didn't say you were looking for a plug in...but you should look over the options presented at Alien Skin. They have exactly what you are looking for.

this is really just basic surfacing...you're somewhat there but there's no dirt, no grunge in the image. it's all way too clean. look at using grunge map in the diffuse and relection channels of your texture and it'll get a lot closer.

take a look at some real plastic too, real world observation is key. how does it reflect? what does the highlight look like? how big it is, how sharp is it?

chris

thanks for you replies, By grunge do you mean noise or something? I have the lighter i'm modeling here and yes its kind of scratched and all so that would be something I have to add to the material. It already reflects an hdri image, I'm not shure why I should be reflecting a grunge map.. could you explain?

also Magic fella thanks ill find out what this 'Alien Skin' thing is

nothing is perfect. put a glass or pen or anything on the table and look at the reflections...they're broken up, there's smudges, that sort of thing. your hdr image is creating the relflections but they're perfect. a grunge map is an image (not random noise but preferaly an image) placed in the reflection or specular channels of the texture to break up that reflection and make it imperfect.

go to dvGarage, click on the Tutorials and Samples link and create an account and go thru some of the video samples, the flask tutorial under object creation is a good start. should help explain some things, you can download some grunge and reflection maps there too.

chris

thanks a lot man, I can really use that.

glad to help, be sure to post an update

chris

I added an update yesterday here http://www.threedy.com/site/forum/s...7320#post317320, where I added some bumb maps. I've whatched a tutorial about the grunge maps on reflections and speculars where you where talking about, I''m not going to add 'm to this scene though because the render took me 5 (!) hours to complete and I dont want to be working on it a lot longer with test renders and all. I certanly can use these technices in new projects. You'll find them on the threedy forums i guess ,
thanks again,
thijs

good lord, what are you rendering in that's taking 5 hours a render?! sounds like some more efficient lighting might be the next thing for you to explore

glad to help tho, be sure to keep posting stuff here as the 3d forum doesnt get much action...

chris

i used max' default render to render since vray screwed up the reflections. I think the lightning is not so complicated:1 target direct spot and about 6-7 omni's with area shadows. but the reflections from the ashtray took a long time (used hammersly (or something) as supersampler).