First of all, most if not all of this tutorial is based on Dendras' Chrome tutorial. Without him sharing this great knowledge, I would have never went down this road of experimentation. You can see his chrome tutorial, an more at: http://www.dendras.com head to the tutorials section.
Thanks Dendras!
Metal Basics:
The Basics of a metallic material setting are pretty simple:
Object Color: Pure Black
Highlight Color: Pure White
Ambient COlor: Pure Black
Reflective Color: Pure White
Highlight Size: 90-99% (I use 95)
Trans Min: (Your choice)
Trans Max: (Your choice)
Falloff: (Your choice)
Texture Map: None
Refection Map: Map of your choice.
Strength: 100%
Multiply Through Lights : On
Multiply through Object Color: Off
Bump Map: (Your choice)
Trans Map: (Your choice)
This leaves the look of your object up to the reflection map.
It will render pretty much as it looks in Poser, and with the
right refect map, you can achive almost true metals in Poser.
These settings are all stright from Dendras' tutorial. The rest of this tutorial shows you how to use these for some different effects.
The Chrome-O-Sphere
Download the Chrome-O-Sphere Here
What is the Chrome-O-Sphere? Well basically it is a sphere prop that I made huge, large enough to place your poser scene into. It alos has been turned "Inside out" so that the normals are facing inward. Also it has it's cast shadows setting turned off so that it will not render all black inside the sphere.
What can I do with it? Well when a reflect map is applied to it, with the above chrome settings, you get two effects. The first is that you get some sky like gradient effects, and second you can mimic suns, bright light spots by pointing a light where you want the spot.
Creating a Reflect Map
Becuase the reflect map is the key to this whole process, there are several tricks I have picked up on creating them.
1. You want your map to be a good mixture of light and dark areas. The more contrast that your image has the better the refect effect will have.
2. For Chromes I use photos and blur them in a photo-editor like Photoshop or Paint Shop Pro. I also enhance there brightness contrast when needed. Photos can be easily gathered from the web, cd collections of clipart, or even taken by yourself. Chrome is ultra shiny and therefor reflects what is in the environment around it, so photos are always your best bet for reflect maps.
3. For Other metals, make your maps a mixture of the lightest tones the metal will give off and the darkest. A good way to get these is to find an image that shows off the meta you wish to copy, and use your image editor's color picker tool to sample colors from the image, with these paint randomly on a new image. The smoother your new map, the smoother your metal will look. Remember that all elements of your map will effect your render.
4. The Larger the better. As with all poser mapping, the larger the map the better the result.
5. Reflect maps have nothing to do with an Objects UV (or Texture Mapping) so don't use an object's template as a base. A reflect map can be used on any object that you wish.
Lighting your Metallic Scene:
Lighting is very important in any scene, but in one that uses Dendras' chrome technique, it is extra important. Because of the High highlight setting. You need to be carefull of where your lights are pointing, their intensity, etc. Too much light in one area will result in a pure white blotchy area, and not enough, and the colors become mottled. I normally use 3 Infinite lights. Either all whites/greys, or pastels to enhance the over-all color of the scene. I space mine so that there are two in the front, and one in the back for backlighting.
Refect Map Packs:
Pack 1 - Chrome 1
Pack 2 - Chrome 2
Pack 3 - Moody 1
Pack 4 - Misc 1
Pack 5 - Chrome 3
Pack 6 - Chrome 4
Pack 7 - Moody 2
Pack 8 - Fire 1
Download them and use them as you wish (Normal MW restrictions apply)
I will post more as DLoTW as I make them.