How to Get This Brushed Nickel Finish?

[Robb63]

I asked this on the forum a few months ago and had no luck so I am trying again.
I have been struggling for ages to get a brushed nickel finish similar to this image. I usually end up with a satin aluminum look, or a very roughly textured chrome.

Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks,

Rob

[Robb63]

Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?

[JeffM]

In KeyShot 2.1 we included the "brushed.jpg" texture that is a highly detailed normal map.

Load that onto a metal material as a bump map, enable "normal map mode" and then adjust your mapping.

That should give you a nice result.

[Robb63]

Thanks Jeff, that is much better. I have a couple of issues with it still. Using the brushed.jpg I am having a hard time controlling the brushed grain direction. I've tried every mapping style and it isn't consistent on any of the surfaces I apply it to and many of them are single surfaces, not polysurfaces (in Rhino).
The other is it is still a little too close to chrome. How do I pull a little more reflectivity out of it making the reflection more diffuse/blurred?

Thanks,
Rob

[Robert V.]

to get a more diffused reflection you need to enable glossy and set the number of glossy samples very high (like 40 to 80)

[Robb63]

Thanks for the tip. I am getting these strange bands in the texture. This is the brushed.jpg and I have another one that I ran the offset filter on in Photoshop but it does the same thing.
I can change the frequency of the banding by increasing/decreasing the scale of the bitmap but I can never get it to disappear completely. Is there a mathematical relationship between the scale and height that needs to be maintained?

[Robert V.]

Not sure, but I can confirm your problem. I encountered the same issue when trying to create your wanted material. It always looks like there is a square picture...