Another top notch tutorial from Mr. Gibbons. As always discovering for us the intricate details of Keyshot to achieve better renders. Thank you so much!
some of the most important things with chrome: edge rounding and HDRI customization; try to use naturalistic lighting, abstract, lighting from below, and odd angles you wouldn't see in the product's natural setting, detract and make it look fake.
Lighting flat chrome surfaces beautifully is the most fun thing ever. An important tip - Do not miss the ground reflection!! Getting a white ground to reflect on the product makes a ton of difference. Especially if in the composition, the camera is looking a little down at the product, it would seem like it is sitting on top of something but that something is not seen on the refelections. You can achieve this by flattening the HDRI under the HDRI settings and adding a gray pin in the center to act as a ground. Another tip is to not add the background colour via image styles tab. It cause problems when you have a ground plane or shadows or Global illumination. Yet another tip is to play with Bloom in image styles
My only suggestion is to use the round edges tool on any part that has a sharp edge. There are no perfect 90 degree corners in manufacturing. Every edge, now matter how sharp, is slightly rounded. Using round edges will let the light catch those edges much more and render more realistically .
Excellent tutorial, and the only I've seen on rendering chrome products. Ran into an interesting problem, when trying to use Physical lights in combination with HDRI lighting. Area lights is seen to much in reflection on the product and using spotlight, IES and point light are not working on chrome at all, unless I increase roughness in the chrome material which makes the material look funky. Light linking would be perfect in this situation and just using an arealight, but is it available in Keyshot yet? And why aren't IES, spotlight and pointlight working on chrome material? (Tried changing material and then those lights worked fine)
Chrome/polished metals are like mirrors. You see area lights (reflecting) in them, not the actual light since it's reflected away from the surface (same as a mirror). You can test this with your phone and a mirror in the bathroom. Adding roughness to a metallic surface gives it diffuse properties. This allows you to see diffuse reflections on the surface and why you can then see the light on the surface. Spot and Point lights have no surface area and thus have nothing to reflect from the surface. The light from these two light sources will be reflected specularly and is not scattered across the surface unless you add roughness. In short, everything is working as it should, but I understand it can be confusing when learning about diffuse and specular reflecitons. I don't know if light linking is on the KeyShot roadmap.
@@WillGibbonsThank you, that explains a lot! So lighting a complex object that needs a physical light to brighten certain areas where the HDRI lighting cant reach is basically impossible without getting reflections in other part of the object on a reflective surface. When using the HDRI lighting I can light the small area but not without affecting other parts of the model. I guess 2 renders and compositing would solve the problem. In Cinema 4d and Octane I found a node called Ray switch that can turn off the self reflections, but I want to transfer to working more with keyshot, the interface and speed of doing gradient falloffs is so much simpler and faster.
