Latex, Leather and shiny stuff - oh my..

Hi everyone!

Quick question for all you 3DS max gurus out there (Yes I'm referring to Abu and Chip primarily - but hey if you know stuff chime in).

I've had some success in creating latex, silk, leather materials for the SL Avatar but of course the material shaders go deep and lighting is even deeper - with the thousands of iterations and such of both - I need help in finding the best way to render out or bake some shiny goodness for those maps. Anyone have a good file setup (lighting etc) to use for rendering out the "slick" look of latex? I'm able to get the stuff to look pretty good - but it still lacks authenicity for me...

The way I have my files set up is the following:

Using Mental Ray renderer

I put in an omni and two spots, 3 sphere primitives with a white shader around the avatar mesh. Then I throw on a black shader material with a falloff reflection (fresnel doncha know). Another material I use is a highly reflective (flat mirror) black material with anisotropic highlights. I haven't found a happy medium yet. Mixing the two seems to yield odd results (even a composite or matte) - but rendering them separate gives me files that when used in Photoshop, look pretty good.

Just curious and wanting a shortcut or possibly a better process.

I am also looking for a procedural leather texture that will tile seamlessly on the Avi - so no bitmaps can be used. IDK - I've seen a few "ok" ones but I would love to find a tutorial or something that would render realistic leather without the use of a bitmap...

Thanks!

Cheers!

Have you possibly considered an environment map? After all shiny latex does reflect. I'd stick to hard surface environments ie: rooms etc rather than organic/nature. As for lighting...I use a light dome myself, but am constantly tweaking the intensity of the lights on each project to get the desired effect. I've also had great results with 4 area lights.

There is a procedural leather texture tutorial on Neal Blevins site http://www.neilblevins.com/cg_education/leather_material/leather_material.htm

I recommend taking a look at his CG education section http://www.neilblevins.com/cg_education/cg_education.htm He has several entries on reflectivity. They are for offline rendering though, so there is nothing specifically related to your issue of baking in reflections and highlights. But the theory he lays down is good insight on the phenomenon.

It is also possible to use textures without getting seams when making shaders, it's just a bit more work. You can make them tileable using Photoshop, or do blends with multiple UV projections across different channels in Max. The previously mentioned Neal Blevins has a script specifically for setting this up in his SoulBurn Scripts package http://www.neilblevins.com/soulburnscripts/soulburnscripts.htm called blendedBoxMapMaker