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Satin finishes

Question asked by Matt Graves on Dec 1, 2008
Latest reply on Dec 5, 2008 by Matt Graves

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I love the satin finish illumination settings in 2009, but they tend to make the final material too dark. I've tweaked everything that can be tweaked and they still end up too dark when compared to my other materials in the same scene. If I bump up the lighting to compensate, all the other materials are washed out.

While I'm waiting for SW to add a "diffuse" and/or "ambient" slider to the satin finish settings, does anyone know of a backdoor way to tweak these? Or has anyone had any luck simulating satin metal finishes using other settings?

Thanks

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Rob Rodríguez Dec 1, 2008 10:59 PM
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Try bumping the reflection slider (in the environment tab) rather than the diffuse light slider. I've found the satin metals are much more dependant on reflection than lighting.
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- Mike Wilson @ Rob Rodríguez on Dec 1, 2008 11:28 PM
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  I've found that if you have a lot of satin finish appearances in your model, that it's best to work backwards.
  
  In other words, optimize your scene with several satin parts (set to their default settings except 'accurate'), *then* add your other parts. I find that it's easier to lower the diffuse of the other appearances.
  
  Download my Tips&Tricks files and open the 'Enviro Calibrato' assembly. You can see what I did there.
  
  You may have to swap out the HDR file (I had Dosch products). Use the one's I supply and like Rob says, make sure the Environment Reflections are turned up (try 1.0 to start).
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  - Matt Graves @ Mike Wilson on Dec 2, 2008 12:59 AM
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    Thanks - that may be the way I have to go, but what a drag - I have more "normal" materials than I do satin ones; would be much easier to tweak one material than several.
    
    All I want is one more slider in the darn illumination settings
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    - Mike Wilson @ Matt Graves on Dec 3, 2008 6:32 PM
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      If your HDR has a lot of black or dark colors, that will be what you see as the dark in your satin appearances.
      
      Try an HDR with less black or more gray etc.
      
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- Matt Graves @ Rob Rodríguez on Dec 2, 2008 12:56 AM
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  Thanks- I hadn't thought of that. Unfortunatley it blasts the highlight but leaves the rest as dark as it started.
  
  I was hoping (against hope) to be able to lighten the entire thing - if I could get it to look like the RealView brushed Al, it would be great, but the rendered version is just too dark.
  
  I tried messing with the .p2m files in notepad, but nothing I did there seemed to do anything - good or bad. I was hoping I could find a way in thru the back door
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Matt Graves Dec 5, 2008 6:34 PM
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Thought I'd give an update. Your suggestions, while great, weren't quite giving me the results I wanted. What I ended up doing was making the part satin finished Al, and then wrapped the whole thing with a decal created from a lighter colored image; I set the illumination for the decal to "matte" and the transparency to 50%. This brightened up the whole thing yet still showed enough of the satin finish effects to make it look right.

More than one way to skin a cat.
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