3D Model - Realistic Metal Material

KoDuty

Hi everybody, can someone please tell me how to make 3D model looks so "Metal"?

I can make something like Car model looks like metal because it has so much reflection, which easy to make to model looks like realistic metal.

But some metal surface (Metal Wall for example) has few reflection, how can I make it looks "metal"?

Because all the time I try to make it looks like metal, it actully looks like plastic.

Found the way to do it in 3ds max

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k0XMdwvsVpQ

but dont know how to do it in Hitfilm

SimonKJones

HitFilm's lighting model is currently best suited to glossy/shiny surfaces - including plastic, as you say. For metals with rougher surfaces it's a little trickier. One thing to look into is making good use of a specular map, which will restrict the specular highlights. If you entire metallic object is super-shiny, that's what makes it look like a toy. If you have a decent specular map, it'll restrict the specular highlights to only the areas you allow. You can use this to make a surface look more scratched/dirty/worn.

3DSMax is always going to have more flexibility and control over materials, because that's its specialism. However, it is an area we'll be looking into expanding in the future.

Triem23

Well, I have bad news for you. That V-ray tutorial did nothing for you at all. V-Ray is a renderer module that plugs into various high-end 3D applications--and costs a thousand bucks. 

V-ray does so many things Hitfilm Pro 3 can't that they really aren't comparable. 

Things to note that you can control: reflections are based entirely on the assigned Environment Map. The Environment Map is an infinite sphere with the image pasted on the inner surface. The Environment Map image should be moved into it's own Composite Shot then embedded into the Composite with the models. All the edits I discuss now should be done in the Environment Map Composite Shot to "bake in the edits." You want a blurry reflection? Blur the map. Want a colored reflection? Tint it. Want to simulate a lower level of reflection? Try darkening the map. Etc. Horizontal Directional blurs on the Environment Map are about as close as you get to Ainsiotropic filters in Hitfilm. 

The next thing is to understand your material settings. Diffuse maps control color, but, even if you have a texture assigned, changing the diffuse color will tint reflections. 

Specular maps control highlights. If you assign a specular texture to an object you control where highlights appear. This can prevent the entire object from being shiny. By changing the Diffuse and Specular colors to different not-white colors you get as close as you can to Falloff mapping. 

 

Shininess is close to glossiness. Low Shine values have broad specular highlights. Higher values have more "pinpoint" highlights. Values around 25-50 are good for metals as a starting point. 

Diffuse and specular reflection sliders, of course, control amount of reflection. Since they are different values it's possible to make a spec map that has some reflection areas with no reflections in others. Then you can set a low value for Diffuse reflections and a high value for Specular. This might be a way to fake reflections in Windows on a building while the brick doesn't reflect. 

Otherwise, if you have a 3D program, you can tweak and retexture the model. If you have the skills you can reassign materials for flexibility in Hitfilm. Tony Cee at NxVisualStudio did that with a TARDIS model: seperated the windows to a material group so they could be assigned reflections while the wood wasn't. 

In the Vray tut the author used a bump map for brushed steel. Hitfilm 3 doesn't support bump maps. If your model ia in 2d mode you can try adding a parallax effect, but how well it works depends on geometry and diffuse mapping. 

 Review Simon Jones's 3D model tutorials for Hitfilm Ultimate 2. Everything works the same in Pro, with the addition of 3D Unrolled. 

Triem23

@Aladdin4D it's @SimonKJones turn to beat me to a post while I was linking--coincidentally to Simon's tutorials! 

KoDuty

Wow specular maps is cool!

And Simon's tutorial shows me the way I can create specular maps from diffuse maps.

But unlucky I dont have diffuse maps 

My 3D model has only .mtl texture file, that I can't open with pts or any picture edittor software :<

Aladdin4d

@KoDuty An mtl file is really just an ASCII text file that names the material files used so you can open it with notepad to see what they are or you could import your model into 3DS Max to see what's going on. If you have 3DS Max that is, if not you can use the free Blender instead.  

Triem23

Mtl files don't contain picture data. Hitfilm automatically reads them with the object. It's a text file with the data for basic materials--Diffuse, Specular, Ambient Colors, etc. You could duplicate the mtl file, rename from mtl to txt and open it in a word processor if curious.  

Aladdin4d

@Triem23 First!

Triem23

@Aladdin4d *Shakes fist*Next time... NEEEEXXT TIIIIIIIIIIIIME! 

KoDuty

oh I use Blender. If .mtl is just text file, so I dont have diffuse maps? :< That's so bad! All 3D battleship models in my games uses .mtl

Aladdin4d

The mtl (Material Template Library) file will specify which textures are for what purpose. Wikipedia has a pretty good description of how obj and mtl files are structured.

Wavefront .obj file

newmtl Textured
Ka 1.000 1.000 1.000
Kd 1.000 1.000 1.000
Ks 0.000 0.000 0.000
d 1.0
illum 2
map_Ka lenna.tga       # the ambient texture map
map_Kd lenna.tga       # the diffuse texture map (most of the time, it will
                                              # be the same as the ambient texture map)
map_Ks lenna.tga        # specular color texture map
map_Ns lenna_spec.tga      # specular highlight component
map_d lenna_alpha.tga       # the alpha texture map
map_bump lenna_bump.tga      # some implementations use 'map_bump'                                                                    #instead of 'bump' below
bump lenna_bump.tga      # bump map (which by default uses luminance                                                           #channel of the image)
disp lenna_disp.tga      # displacement map
decal lenna_stencil.tga      # stencil decal texture (defaults to 'matte'                                                                    #channel of the image)

So by looking at the mtl file you can tell what the maps, if any, are supposed to be or at least get the base texture maps that you could make diffuse and specular maps for.

KoDuty

wow that's very helpful! Thanks so much people!