11-18-2023, 03:46 AM
Yay, that's somewhat better! Good call on the glass, it should indeed have light reflecting right through it.
Yeah metal can definitely have smooth gradient, especially if it's rougher. But in this case the base of the hourglass has faces cut into it, so like each plane would reflect a slightly different amount of light.
With the couldron example from a while ago I think I was trying to show how there are lots of different textures and types of metal, but the material does reflect the environment regardless. It's just how much the reflection is diffused by roughness, or little bumps in the surface. If you think of something that is as smooth and polished as possible, it's gonna be a mirror, right? And then something as rough as possible will just be matte. Since you've done more Blender than I have I'm sure you've seen this playing with the materials. Like if you change the roughness slider it makes it looks polished or unpolished just from the light reflection. So how that relates to the base is that if it's supposed to be new, pretty smooth metal, the reflection of the light should actually be smaller, like only a few faces would actually be at the right angle to make a highlight. Just like on a mirror, there's only one place where you can see the light bulb lighting the room, everything on the surface is just some part of the room.
A lot of your metal studies do look good. Like the gold objects one really does look like gold. But idk if they take this into account that much either.
I will try and see if I can show or make any visual examples
Yeah metal can definitely have smooth gradient, especially if it's rougher. But in this case the base of the hourglass has faces cut into it, so like each plane would reflect a slightly different amount of light.
With the couldron example from a while ago I think I was trying to show how there are lots of different textures and types of metal, but the material does reflect the environment regardless. It's just how much the reflection is diffused by roughness, or little bumps in the surface. If you think of something that is as smooth and polished as possible, it's gonna be a mirror, right? And then something as rough as possible will just be matte. Since you've done more Blender than I have I'm sure you've seen this playing with the materials. Like if you change the roughness slider it makes it looks polished or unpolished just from the light reflection. So how that relates to the base is that if it's supposed to be new, pretty smooth metal, the reflection of the light should actually be smaller, like only a few faces would actually be at the right angle to make a highlight. Just like on a mirror, there's only one place where you can see the light bulb lighting the room, everything on the surface is just some part of the room.
A lot of your metal studies do look good. Like the gold objects one really does look like gold. But idk if they take this into account that much either.
I will try and see if I can show or make any visual examples