Does anyone here have any tips for rendering parts that are black so they actually look like shint black parts?? I am having NO luck with this. All of my black parts become washed out and you can't see the individual features of the part. For instance, a black plastic wheel with ribs on the inside. All you can see are the silhouette features.
I have tried adding more lights, but that just turnl all the light-colored parts bright white.
I have also tried playing with the roughness value, but that hasnt helped much either.
Any suggestions would be helpful. I just about had it licked in PhotoWorks 1 but with PWX 2 I have pretty much had to rethink everything.
Thanks for any help in advance, and everyone have a happy/safe 4th o' JULY!!
I don't know if this will help with PW2, but I always noticed it helps in PW1 if you do not make the color as black as possible. I make them a hair lighter than completely black and that helps me.
Fillet all edges of ribs so they catch light - every sharp edge should have .005" fillet or greater.
If the material is mirrored in real life (like polished plastic) add a mirror to it. Look at the lid of a Weber grill when you are grilling this weekend (wink), and try to visualize how it would have no definition if it wasn't reflective. If the material has a surface finish - like a slight moldtek texture - be sure to put that into your PWx material. Alittle surface texture helps out a ton!
Turn up the specularity of the material - specualrity and roughness work as a team. If I want nice bright edges, I set the specularity to 1, and the roughness to .06. Any more roughness, and the part will get washed out. The final result is effective, but a little stylized - comes from my marker rendering heritage - but works great as a starting point. If you want more relaism, you will probably knock the specularity back to .6 and the roughness back to .04 or so.
Remember that the specualrity setting in the lights doesn't do anything in PWx, so just leave that alone.
Most parts are not really pitch black - they are a little grey. If appropriate, I will lighten my material up to around 40 on the Red, Green, and Blue so the dark side of the model has 'somewhere to go'. But this is not strictly necessary - I've gotten good definiton of absolute black parts using the techniques above.
If you have seen the rendering I did of the RC truck, you will see the wheels and front bumper are a nice, rich black, without losing their shape. We also sent you that barbecue grill rendering last year that shows the power of reflections.
I render in Black all the time. The trick is simply setting the specularity and shininess in the colors of the part, and very little setting changes in the lighting. Go to document properties, colors, then change the part to black. Go to the advanced button and adjust specularity all the way to the right. Adjust shininess 1½ lines from the left. This is the basic starting point I use for black. The lights semm to work better for me if they are about 100" away from my subject, ambient turned down about half way, specularity up past half to all the way on. Lots of dim lights work better that 1 bright light. Hope this helps. Greg
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