well if you put your color to black and your reflection to 1.. it means you will get chrome effect - meaning all of your material quality will come from environment it reflects (sort of like chrome...

put an environment map for reflections... make your color close to 0 and bump up reflections to almost 1

since I'm not a modeler (never had the patience, heh)..I'll allow myself to ask a question :)

How to make a wire running from point A to point B? I'm not talking about simple Lofted NURBS... I'm...

try converting it to tiff first...it might be the compression that results in problem..

Also, you can't import AI as a background image..convert it to tiff or something simillar

technically speaking, there is no highlight in real-world...it's an effect seen in reflection (how ever small it may be) :D :D

not only reflections... if we're talking about polished metal (like for a sword for example) then keep your highlights sharp...otherwise make them broad...

one thing about metal is that specular...

I'd like to make a re-work of hot peppers tutorial from simplylightwave.com, but in maya...

I'll make it tonight and post it in the forum if anyone wan't it? It'll be as a series of pictures,...

no problem :)

the best way is to use IBL node in the Render Globals of Mental Ray (if that's what you are using)...

if you just wan't the skybox... ( :) ) then set it's material incadescence to the same texture...

some improvements youcould do to the process:

- instead of making a blinn object one color, you could put in a color slot a noise texture with broad even distribution and apply two very simillar...