Thread: help on glossy scene / light panels

thanks chris, you're the man btw so the environment channel is spherically mapped, so if you paint a square in bodypaint, and use that texture, will you have weird pinched squares in the env. channel? this is all super instructive. chris, was the envornment channel trick how you and the monkey created that nice collaborative piece with all the sponsors etc. i remember reading a really nice write up the monkey did about that

Have to agree with KR Studio with 3 boxes - maybe a mask over one or two of the lights? Its really up to you how big, bright and what masks you use over those lights. Where you position, angle them, do you illuminate the background or just have a grey. Will be interesting to see your final render.

fair enough. Couldn't be arsed to render a preview of the animation but I'll take your word for it that you've got the cards close enough to the model to get rid of flickering. Those gradients are nice but have you tried using similar setup as photographers? That image I posted (you can right click to view it, i messed up the link) i just boosted the reflectivity, got rid of the colour, added a fresnel to the reflection channel...

I think perhaps you might be over thinking it a bit. Set up a very simple material in your phone. In my example, it's a dark gray color in the color channel, and a reflection channel, with a slight fresnel (not too much fresnel, or you'll lose that gloss you're looking for, but just enough to add some variation in the reflection). Then, set your object up in a gray space (in this case, just a floor that gently rolls into a back...

Hey jablinko! The gradient will be differant depending in the geometry its applied to -- you just gotta mess with it until it looks right. That one was done with a couple stripes of gradient in the 2d-v position and no their are no lights in the seen at all. Also if you want to have something reflecting in it I think you could just thow on a compositing tag and include or exclude whatever you want to be reflected -- not sure though I've...

Quote: Originally Posted by jablinko thanks chris, you're the man btw so the environment channel is spherically mapped, so if you paint a square in bodypaint, and use that texture, will you have weird pinched squares in the env. channel? this is all super instructive. chris, was the envornment channel trick how you and the monkey created that nice collaborative piece with all the sponsors etc. i remember reading a really nice write up...

i don't know if it is my english again, but at least for me it is not perfectly clear what you want to achieve. nevertheless you should be aware of the fact that *glossy materials* depend on more than the reflection channel. the most important point to achieve convincing results (especially when aiming for a studio setup) is that your reflections should match the actual lighting setup of the scene. this is because you actually want...

Here are some free HDR studio environment maps posted by zbyg: http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?t=671334 Here are the same HDR's in a higher resolution. Non-torrent links are further down the page: http://forums.3dtotal.com/showthread.php?t=62769