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.