Hello All,
I am just wondering if anyone out there has a good setup for rendering "Satin Finished" or "4B" Stainless steel.
The versions that come with Solidworks do seem quite real for me.
Please let me know what kind of setting you are using to acheive a great rendered finish.
Thanks Everyone!
What version and SP of SolidWorks are you using?
What Appearance are you using today? Appearances are greatly affected by the environment you are using.
Can you post an example file set up for rendering for us to look at?
Cheers,
Anna
Hi, i'm in the same position as i work mostly in 304 Stainless steel. I've been working on an accurate finish for quite a while and still haven't found anything that really looks quite right.
Brushed finish can sometimes look a bit unreal depending on what environment you use.
I agree with Anna, the environment plays a huge part with reflective materials such as stainless. If you're using an environment with colour it will take on a hue of that colour.
Lighting is also important, stainless isn't as bright as you might expect, but reflects a lot of light, play around with the positioning of your light sources. It may also pay to experiment with point lights and spotlights, personally I prefer these to the default directionals.
Brent (and other PV users)
You might want to note that metals have been dramatically improved in SW2013 (Anisotropy reflections and brushed bump mapping seem improved.) Ron might want to chime-in about the details of that, but, I for one, am very happy about it! Below image does not do justice to the improvements because I wanted to do a simple out-of-the box comparison (look closely at shadowed areas and brush grain). More complex scenes with more self reflections will result in more dramatic improvement.
regards
Mark
What version are you running? 2013 has an assets sharing library with luxology that has great materials. Also try searching for satin finished steel, or brushed steel on bing or google and importing them into a folder viewable by solidworks.