1. Open up Layout. Load the 7.1-mini.lws scene from the companion CD.

The scene already has an environment added to it in the form of an HDR image loaded into Image World. This ensures that the metal and glass of the vehicle will have something to reflect.

Let’s start with the car paint. There are two different colors of paint currently applied to the car—agreen and a light cream color. I chose these two colors because they are classic colors for these cars, but by all means go ahead and change the color if you so wish.

2. Open the Surface Editor and select the “car paint green” surface. Set up the surface values as follows:

RGB: 13, 36, 6 (this should be applied already)

Diffuse: 80% (This lower value prevents the surface from becoming oversaturated when we apply reflections to it.)

Specularity: 100%

Glossiness: 80%

Reflection: Leave at 0% for now, as we will use a gradient for this later.

3. Leave all the other values as they are, as shown in Figure 21-3.

4. Go to the Advanced tab and give the Color Highlights a value of 70%. This is to prevent the surface from becoming overly bright when we add reflection to it, since it tints the specularity as well as the reflections on the surface.

5. Go back to the Basic tab now, and click on the “T” button for Reflection to open up its Texture Editor. Change the default layer to a gradient layer by clicking on the Layer Type pull-down list and selecting Gradient.

6. Change the Input Parameter of the gradient to Incidence Angle. This gradient will allow us to control the amount of reflectivity based on the angle at which we view the painted car surface. Varying the reflectivity helps to create a sense of realism, since having a constant value of reflectivity across the entire surface is overwhelming and tends to look really CG.

7. Select the top key on the gradient ramp that is automatically created when you create a gradient layer. Change its Value to 45%.

8. Now create a new key at the bottom of the gradient at 90.0 (you can tweak this with the Parameter value to be sure). Change the Value of this key to 5.0%.

This gradient now makes the surface 5% reflective in areas that are directly facing the viewer (in other words, the areas that are directly perpendicular to our line of vision), and gradually increases to a value of 45% reflectivity on areas of the surface that slope out of our line of vision, this being 90º.

We are now finished with setting up the basic parameters of the green paint. However, the paint still doesn’t look quite right yet.

9. Go to the Shaders tab and load the BRDF shader.

10. Double-click on the shader’s name to open its panel. Set up the Layer 1 tab with the following values:

Specular Reflection 1: Regular

Color: 150, 150, 150

Specular: 60%

Glossiness: 10%

This creates a fairly strong yet broad specular highlight on the surface. This sort of highlight is suitable for a dull metal.

Now we need to create another specular layer on top of this one to create the effect of a coating on the surface that has different specular properties.

11. Go to the Layer 2 tab. Set up the values on this tab as follows:

Specular Reflection 2: Regular

Color: 255, 255, 255

Specular: 150%

Glossiness: 80%

This creates a two-layer effect in the specularity of the surface. The first layer we created was suitable for metal, while the second layer acts like a lacquer that has been applied to the metal, giving it a nice shine and coating.

The preview pane in your Surface Editor should now be showing a rather reflective, shiny-coated-looking material.

Now it is time to create the cream colored paint. Since we have already set up a good-looking paint for the green, all we need to do is copy those settings into this surface and change the color to cream.

12. Select the green car paint surface, right-click on it, and select Copy. Select the cream car paint surface, right-click, and select Paste. Then change the cream paint surface RGB values to 240, 238, 198.

13. Check the Double Sided option for the cream paint; otherwise we’ll be able to see through the roof of the car!

Now let’s set up the chrome surface. Chrome is highly reflective, and for the purposes of this tutorial, we’ll be making it look brand spanking new. The chrome surface is applied to the bumper, the front grille, the mirrors, and all the metal trim on the vehicle’s body.

14. Select the “chrome” surface in the Surface Editor list and set up the basic parameters as follows:

RGB: 32, 32, 32 (This should be applied already.)

Diffuse: 50% (We need to make this value very low since the reflections will be quite strong.)

Specularity: 80% (Specularity is generally unnecessary when using a lot of reflection, but I usually assign a value out of habit, and frankly it can’t hurt to have a bit of specularity anyway.)

Glossiness: 60%

Reflection: Leave at 0% for now, as we will also be creating a gradient here again.

Leave all the other values as they are.

15. Go to the Advanced tab and give the Color Highlights a value of 30%. Once again, this is to prevent the surface from becoming overly bright when we add reflection to it.

16. Go back to the Basic panel, and open the Texture Editor for the Reflection attribute by clicking the “T” button. Change the default layer created to a gradient layer by changing the Layer Type from Image to Gradient. Once again, this will be an incidence-based gradient, so select Incidence Angle as the Input Parameter for the gradient.

17. Select the top key that has been created on the gradient ramp, and change its Value to 60%. Create a key at the bottom of the gradient ramp now, at 90.0, and change that key’s Value to 20%.

18. Now render! As you can see, I had already set up the surfaces for the other parts of the car. Feel free to experiment with the model, set up your own surface ideas, and make something really cool out of it.

Of course this car looks very, very new with perfect chrome reflections and such, so it doesn’t have much realism at all, but this was just a simple tutorial to demonstrate shading with reflections and to get started working with metallic surfaces.

Later on in this chapter we’ll be looking at rusty metal, so I would recommend that you have some fun with this car and rust it up a whole lot once you’re more comfortable with the techniques.

1. Open Modeler and load the 7.1-desert_eagle.lwo model from the companion CD.

2. Go to your Top viewport where you can see the pistol from above. Zoom in so that the pistol fills the viewport rather snugly, and then take a screen shot of it by pressing Prt Sc (on a PC). Close Modeler.

3. Now go into your favorite paint application. Create a new file, which should automatically be the size of your screen (your current screen resolution in pixels). When the new document has been created, simply paste the image from your computer’s clipboard into the document.

4. Now crop this image so the pistol fills the image on all sides. Basically, find the topmost and lowest points of the model, and the farthest right and farthest left parts, and crop the image to that, so that there is no surrounding space around the pistol. This is so that when we finish creating the textures, we can use the Automatic Sizing option to perfectly fit the image to the model.

5. Before you do anything else, resize this image so that we have more room to work. Size the image up to a minimum of 2000 pixels wide. If you cropped your image to the pistol size correctly, you should have a size that is close to 2000 × 1050 pixels.

6. If your paint program has the option, lock the layer with the screen shot. This is to avoid accidentally painting on it. In Adobe Photoshop you lock a layer by clicking on the tiny little lock icon in the Layers panel where it says “Lock.”

7. Create a new layer on top of the layer with the screen shot. Paint the entire area of the pistol with the RGB color 37, 42, 45. This is a dark gray-blue color.

What really helps me position details when I am painting textures is to create a copy of the screen shot (or UV map shot) and place it above what I am doing so that I can see all the contours of the model, as shown in Figure 21-18.

I copy the layer with the screen shot and increase its contrast until it is pure black and white.

I then change the blending mode of this layer to Screen. This makes all the black areas of the layer transparent. I keep this layer on top of all the other layers in my Photoshop file, on a low opacity, so that I can always see what shapes I am painting onto.

8. Now comes the detailing part. Set your paintbrush to black, and on a medium to low opacity with a soft edge, paint darker areas on the gun surface, especially following the contours of the different pieces that make up the gun. Don’t overdo it though; just build up the darker tones carefully and subtly. Then use a white paintbrush, also on a low opacity with a soft edge, and gently build up a few lighter areas here and there.

Figure 21-20 shows the areas that I darkened and lightened — please note that I have brightened the image solely to make it clearer to you what I have done, and that my texture is not mysteriously a whole lot lighter than yours.

This is simply to create some color variation. If you look at the contours of the model, you’ll see that I darkened areas at the edges of pieces and the area around the plastic grip, as these are areas that often tend to become worn or gather grime. Steel tends to become blackish in areas from the oil from people’s fingers over a long period of time. So these darker areas create that effect. The lighter areas simply offset the darker areas here and there, solely for the purpose of variation.

The important thing is to do this carefully. Don’t go and simply paint big splotches of dark and light tones. Build up your tonal variations subtly and cautiously.

9. Create a new layer. Fill this layer with the same color that you initially painted the gun. Now create some noise. In Adobe Photoshop you can do this by going to Filter>Noise>Add Noise. Set the Amount to 100%, leave the Distribution on Gaussian, and make sure that the noise is Monochromatic.

10. Now add Motion Blur to the noise. Go to Filter>Blur>Motion Blur, set the Distance to 250 pixels, and leave the Angle at 0.

Your layer should now look like Figure 21-23. I have cropped my layer to the shape of the pistol, although it isn’t strictly necessary. I have also increased the contrast in this image so that the detail is clearer for you to see.

11. Change the Blending Mode of this layer to Darken. Doing this now blends the brushed layer with the layer beneath it, so that it just adds a hint of detail to the color map so far.

12. Time for some scratches. Create a new layer and set the color of your paintbrush to a light gray, around 140, 140, 140. Make your paintbrush size 1 pixel. Now paint some scratches around the barrel, on the tip of the muzzle, and around the trigger. These are areas that are likely to become scratched since they come into contact the most with other things such as the owner’s hand and the holster. You can paint the scratches fairly roughly, in a criss-crossing pattern.

Figure 21-24 shows a close-up of the scratches I created around the trigger area.

13. Now change the opacity of this particular layer to 20% or thereabouts, so that they are only faintly visible.

14. Desert Eagles have some text on them, so let’s add that next. Use Arial, at size 36 for this text, and type “® DESERT EAGLE .50AE PISTOL” and below that line, type “ISRAEL MILITARY INDUSTRIES LTD (I.M.I).” Set the text to center justification and place it on the shaft of the pistol, as shown in Figure 21-25.

15. Change the text color to black and set the layer’s opacity down to 40%. That’s it for the color layers. Save a copy of this out as your color image texture.

16. Create a new layer. This will be the base layer for your bump texture. Make it a medium gray, using 100, 100, 100 as the RGB values.

17. Copy the scratches layer you made earlier and place the new copy over the bump base layer. Change the brightness of the layer (go to Image>Adjustments>Brightness/Contrast) so that the scratches are a shade of gray just slightly darker than the gray of the base bump layer. We don’t want these to look like giant scratches in the surface, just very shallow abrasions on it.

18. Copy the text layer that you made earlier, and place it above the scratches layer. Change the color of the text to 157, 157, 157. This is so that the text will appear slightly raised on the surface of the pistol.

19. Next, copy the brushed layer that you created with the motion blurred noise and place it in between the scratches layer and the text layer. Change the blending mode of the layer to Screen. It will go much lighter, adding the brushed grain to the underlying layers. This will help to create some texture to the bump map so that the metal does not appear totally smooth.

20. Your bump layers are now complete. Save a copy out as a file to use as a texture in LightWave.

21. Now we move on to the specular layers. Create a new layer and fill it with a medium gray, RGB 60, 60, 60. Now go to Filter>Noise>Add Noise. Enter an Amount of 20% and leave the other settings as they are.

Adding noise to the specularity softens the specular highlights somewhat, and gives the metal that mottled, grainy look that steel generally tends to have.

22. Now, as you did before with the color layers, create a new layer, and taking a dark paintbrush on a low opacity with a soft edge, paint some darker areas on top of the noisy specular layer to create some variations. Do the same with a light color as well, so that some areas have slightly stronger specular values.

23. Copy the scratches layer from the bump map, and place it above the layer you just created. Adjust the brightness of the layer (Image>Adjustments>Brightness/Contrast) so that the scratches are a very light gray (not white, but close to white).

And now for the final little detail in the specular map. This one is optional, and is rather over the top, but it’s the kind of detail that I love adding — fingerprints. Fingerprints are really great to add to the specular maps of shiny materials like metals and plastics since in reality we see them all over everything. In this particular example, I will use fingerprints to lessen the specularity, although in some cases a fresh fingerprint will actually increase the specularity because of its oily residue.

Making a fingerprint is simple. You can try to find an image of one on the web (do a Google image search for “fingerprint”), or you can even take your own prints and scan them in. However you choose to do them, make sure you edit the image to get a nice, clear, contrasted fingerprint like the one in Figure 21-31.

24. Add a few fingerprints to the barrel of the pistol.

What’s really great about a detail like this is that you can brag about it. You can go around saying, “I even added fingerprints to the textures — aren’t I a great texturing artist?” and everyone will be suitably impressed. Or maybe not. Well, it’s up to you really. Save these textures as a copy to a file that you will use as a specular texture.

25. Moving on to the reflection layers now, the reflection map will be the last map you create for this particular model. Start off by copying the noisy layer you created as the base texture for the specular map. Darken it considerably (by about 65% in the Brightness/Contrast panel), as we don’t want the pistol to be too reflective, so darken it until it becomes a dark charcoal gray, almost black. The noise in the layer will give us a nice grainy reflectivity for the pistol.

26. Just as we have done before with the color and specular layers, create a new layer now and paint some lighter and darker areas here and there to create a little variation. Make sure that the light areas are not too light though, as we want to keep the overall reflectivity quite low.

27. Finally, copy the scratches layer and place it above this last layer, and take the opacity down slightly so that the scratches won’t be too reflective. We just want the scratches to be slightly more reflective than the rest. Save these layers to a file to use as a reflection texture.

And now we are done with the texture painting!

28. Load the 7.1-desert_Eagle.lws scene from the companion CD in Layout. I have already set up a basic light in the scene, as well as a light that is purely there for adding specular highlights. You’ll notice that the spotlight has the Affect Diffuse option turned off, while Affect Specular remains checked. Having lighting that is there purely for specularity can help to enhance shiny objects without making their surfaces overblown from high diffuse levels.

29. Open the Surface Editor, and select the “steel” surface. Set up the basic parameters as follows:

RGB: 37, 42, 45 (not really all that necessary though, since we are going to be using a texture for the color)

Diffuse: 70%

Specularity: Leave at 0% (since we are mapping it)

Glossiness: 3% (so that the specular highlights are broad, creating a duller, cold metal look)

Reflection: Leave at 0% (because we’ve made a texture for it)

Leave all the other settings as they are.

30. Open the Texture Editor for the Color attribute by clicking on the “T” button next to it. The default layer that is created is for an image map, so simply load your color map that you saved into this layer by loading it from the Image pull-down list.

Select Y as the Texture Axis since we are projecting the image downward onto the model. Hit the Automatic Sizing option. Since you cropped the screen shot of the pistol earlier to the exact proportions of the model, the image should project perfectly onto the pistol. (See Figure 21-38.)

31. Now do the same thing for the Specularity, Reflection, and Bump channels, loading the appropriate texture that you created into each of their Texture Editor panels.

32. Render! You’ll notice that I have activated radiosity in the lighting, simply because it looks so nice! If you are finding the rendering too slow, you might want to consider switching the radiosity off or changing the quality of the radiosity to speed it up.

Your render should look something like Figure 21-39.

If you find that the reflections or specularity has come out a little too bright, simply adjust the Layer Opacity of those textures in their respective Texture Editor panels.

• Always place metal surfaces in an environment that they can reflect.

• Use low Diffuse values.

• Use medium to high Specular values (for quick rendering results).

• Use low to medium Glossiness values (if you’re using specular mapping).

• Use low to high Reflection values in reflection maps for more realistic effects (instead of specular maps).

• Scratch the metal up, especially in areas where it is touched a lot.

• Scratches in steel and other duller metals are generally more specular/reflective than the surrounding metal. Once the metal has aged a lot, place rust into the cracks and scratches.

• Use the Color Highlights option to prevent high levels of reflectivity from becoming blown out.

• Create mottled reflection and specular maps to give a sense of wear and tear.

• Blur the reflections for slightly older metal, especially steel.

• Use noisy images or procedurals in the specular and reflection maps to create a grainy effect.

• Use the BRDF shader for anisotropic effects. Worley Labs’ G2 plug-in also has great anisotropic effects and can produce very realistic results.