Problem Creating CRV Steel Material

[shapeshiftr]

Hello,

This is my first post here on Keyshot forums. I am trying to create a CRV Steel material to apply to my driver bit models, and I will also use this material for screwdriver shafts. For some reason, I am getting a different effect on the flat surfaces of the model than the more organic tip. Seems to have to do with the roughness. When I lower the roughness the flat areas look better - but the tip is too shiny. I can't seem to find a balanced setting that creates a unified look. Does anyone have any idea why this might be happening? I haven't experienced this issue before. I have attached some screens to show what I am talking about.

I really appreciate anyone who takes the time to respond.

Thanks!

[Chad Holton]

Hello,

Welcome to the forum. Flat surfaces are a bit harder to perfect. Once you have the roughness where you want, try playing with your lighting. If you have Pro, you can add pins to help give the flat areas more depth. Richard did a nice webinar discussing this and I'll post it when I'm at a PC again.

Chad

[shapeshiftr]

Hey Chad,

Thank you for your helpful response! I have noticed that flat surfaces act very differently than round, organic surfaces. As I would love to add pins to my scene, I only have the HD version  . For now, I rendered out two separate images and made a composite in Photoshop. I wish I could avoid this, since I have an extensive amount of driver bits to render and this will slow down my workflow. Can I get your input on this material? Do you think it looks realistic?

Thanks,

JC

[Chad Holton]

I think it's looking really nice. Would avoid post work as much as possible though, since you have so many to do. Try messing with different environments and their settings and also try IES lights too. Once you have the environment/lights the way you want, then make it the startup scene or a treat it like a template.

Also, you can smooth out the steel's roughness by cranking up the samples. Not saying it needs it, just an FYI.

[Robb63]

You could also add planes just off camera using "add geometry" (I'm assuming that's in the HD version?)
Then you can make them black or white (or add an emissive light) to add reflections/highlights to the flat areas.

[shapeshiftr]

Thank you Chad, increasing the samples helped a bit as well. I definitely want to avoid as much post work as possible, and I will play around more with IES lights/environment settings.

Robb, that's actually a great idea, I didn't think of that. Going to test that in my next render.

Thanks for the help guys!