Problem with realism in shiny surfaces

[Lars]

Hello!
I find it so hard to create realistic lighting for these black shiny loudspeakers. It all just looks a bit plastic and fake.
Does anyone have a recommendation for a good lighting tutorial?
Cheers

[Zeltronic]

Light is the key try different HDRI or tune one to achieve your goal

[RRIS]

One thing to consider is rendering them separately and compositing later, since they're probably blocking reflections for each other.

[Lars]

Good tips! Thank you both

[TGS808]

One thing to consider is rendering them separately and compositing later, since they're probably blocking reflections for each other.

By doing that, you won't see one reflected in the other.

[RRIS]

One thing to consider is rendering them separately and compositing later, since they're probably blocking reflections for each other.

By doing that, you won't see one reflected in the other.

Depending on what you need the image for, that could be a good thing.. one of my clients for example requested me to clean up reflections like that. And depending on the angles you could probably remove reflections like that as well.

[DMerz III]

Shiny things are highly dependent on the environment around them. If you're looking for studio lighting, try finding a studio HDRI as a background that contains low visibility of lighting equipment etc and turn down the intensity of that background. This will give you some low-level reflections that will help add realism, then add your additional light pins on top to bring in your actual lighting.

If you have a completely blank BG, you're basically saying I've found an impossibly improbably black room to shoot these in.

This is usually my approach. Sometimes HDRs are just great for reflecting things, not just for lighting.

[TGS808]

Depending on what you need the image for, that could be a good thing.. one of my clients for example requested me to clean up reflections like that. And depending on the angles you could probably remove reflections like that as well.

While that may be true in some cases, I can only go by what the original poster asked and the image that he posted. He asked for ways to make it look more real and showed two shiny, reflective speakers next to each other. I assume he wants to make that image look more real. Having no reflections as you suggested may make it look cleaner but I won't likely make it look more realistic. Which in this case, would be a bad thing.