Best setup for single object render?

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    Enscape is my first rendering engine so sorry for this basic question. I'm trying to render a single object like a coin. The rendered image should be straight on the face of it with some shiny highlights. I've tried to create like a studio by using a box in Sketchup and place spotlights in certain positions inside the box with the coin in the center of the box but the image results don't seem life like. I was hoping someone could help point me into a better direction for something like this?


    Thanks,



    Eric

    It probably doesn't seem life-like because the lighting is flat. I would recommend setting the time to 00:00 so that the object is lit solely by your spotlights (use more than one). And you need to use a texture with "metal" in the name (Just re-name the texture) so that it becomes shiny. Are there any raised sections on the coin? If it's just flat disc with an image face then it might look like... a flat disc with an image on it's face.


    You might also find it tricky to navigate if you are keeping the object at the proper scale; Enscape is primarily used for architectural builds, so I would increase the scale by a factor of (eg) 100 so that it's huge.


    (The attached is just a 3D warehouse search for "coins", scaled up 100x, sitting on a "grass" texture and lit with three spotlights - increased in power because of the scale.)

    It is very important to use textures that do not have lighting on them. The coin here has a visible specular highlight on the albedo texture that looks odd.


    For a coin, the best setup would be (given our new material editor from the preview version): Use a coin mesh based on a cylinder. Set the metal parameter to 100% since its a plain metal. The figures on the coin should be contained in the normal map. The dirt at the edges in the roughness map. The albedo/color should only contain a single color, the metals color.


    Maybe use a spotlight and create two large emissive rectangles like photographers do. This will get you great specular highlights.


    Not very easy, but this will lead to photoreal results.

    If the coins must not be looking like brand new, than best use a color texture too, so you could get a dirt effect in the small edges. Also I would add a map for the glossiness effect. And finally some scratches could be add to the bump texture.


    General for product design it's a problem that Enscape doesn't support layered materials. At Vray I would mix diffuse/blurry reflection/ clear reflection. Mixing blur and clear reflection allow to get an effect like "a little bit used, but polished later" look.