Soulburn Studios Art Lessons

Chrome Material
By Neil Blevins
Created On: June 19th 2002
Updated On: Sept 25th 2020

Here's a tutorial on how to create a chrome material in a number of different ways for 3dsmax, although the theory will work for any 3d app or renderer.

I highly recommend reading my Reflections And Highlights tutorial first, as it will discuss what a diffuse reflection is, a specular reflection is, how a specular reflection and a "reflection" relate to each other, etc.

Polished Raytraced Chrome

The basic ingredients are as follows:

GGX Shader ideally (But Blinn or Phong will do)
Almost Black Diffuse (The brighter the Diffuse the more it will look like an alloy, ie, a mixture of a metal and another material)
High Specular Reflectivity
Almost 100% Glossiness
Fresnel Reflections, IOR between 6 and 20

Now that we have the theory, lets show how to create the effect in 3d using a number of different 3d apps and renderers.

3dsmax's Raytrace Material In Scanline Renderer
3dsmax's Brazil Advanced Material in Brazil Rio Renderer
3dsmax's Arch & Design Material in mentalray Renderer
3dsmax's VrayMtl Material in Vray Renderer

3dsmax's Raytrace Material in Scanline Renderer

Here's an example file to make a scene like the image above using 3dsmax's Scanline Renderer: polished_raytraced_chrome_scanline.zip (Requires 3dsmax 8 or later, Scanline Renderer)

The material is a Raytrace Material. Set the diffuse to Black. Add a falloff map to the reflect slot, set to fresnel, check the Override Material IOR checkbox, give it an IOR of 20. Turn off specular highlight if you want to use real raytraced reflections only and not light the scene with specular lights.

Remember, half of what makes a material look like a particular material is the environment it's in. A wise man said reflections only look as good as the environment the object is reflecting, keep that in mind. For this scene, I have a a smooth gradient from white (low) to black (high). I also have a few self illuminated white cards near the camera to appear in reflections. These cards have an output map in the diffuse slot, and a higher then 1 RGB level, which blows out the cards to values above white, making them appear brighter in reflections.

3dsmax's Brazil Advanced Material in Brazil Rio Renderer

Here's an example file to make a scene like the image above using 3dsmax's Brazil Renderer: polished_raytraced_chrome_brazil.zip (Requires 3dsmax 5 or later, Brazil Rio)

The first material in the file is a Brazil Advanced Material. Set the diffuse to Black. Add a falloff map to the reflect slot, set to fresnel, check the Override Material IOR checkbox, give it an IOR of 20. Turn off specular highlight if you want to use real raytraced reflections only and not light the scene with specular lights.

The second uses the Brazil Chrome Material. These materials are quite similar. The Chrome Material automatically has no diffuse, turn the reflections on, note that there's no IOR control, this material will be 100% reflective. While an IOR of 20 is ALMOST perfectly reflective, it's not completely, and so you'll notice a little of the black diffuse color peaking through on the Brazil Advanced Material. This material has none of that. Turn off specular highlight if you want to use real raytraced reflections only and not light the scene with specular lights. Note: the advantage of using the chrome material is that it's more optimized than the Advanced material (since it's been specifically written only for chrome), so it'll render faster. The disadvantage is that if you want to add a little diffuse back to your material, you can't, hence I would generally recommend using the Advanced Material since it's more flexible, but the choice is yours.

3dsmax's Arch & Design Material in mentalray Renderer

Here's an example file to make a scene like the image above using 3dsmax's mentalray Renderer: polished_raytraced_chrome_mr.zip (Requires 3dsmax 2009 or later, mentalray)

Create an Arch & Design Material. Set Diffuse Level to 0.0. Set the Reflectivity to 1.0. Check "Metal material". Turn the Diffuse Color to white (this is because the Metal material checkbox multiplies the color of your reflections with your diffuse color.) Set IOR in the Refraction section to 20.0. Under the BRDF dropdown, set the radiobutton to "By IOR (fresnel reflections)".

3dsmax's VrayMtl Material in Vray Renderer

Here's an example file to make a scene like the image above using 3dsmax's Vray Renderer: polished_raytraced_chrome_vray.zip (Requires 3dsmax 2014 or later, Vray 2.4, ColorCorrect)

This uses a VrayMtl Material, the diffuse is black, the reflect color is set to white. Fresnel Reflections on, Fresnel IOR is set to 20. (note, the env is wrapped in a ColorCorrect map to set the gamma correctly, since this scene uses Linear Workflow)

The Relationship Between Diffuse Reflection and Specular Reflection

In any real surface, the diffuse component and the specular component when added together must be equal to a ratio of 1. This is the law of Energy Conservation. For more info on Energy Conservation, please read Energy Conservation In Shaders. So if your specular is at a value of 1, or pure white, your diffuse should be a value of 0, or pure black, so together they equal 1, or reflect back as much light as it receives. In cg we can cheat this, however, the more we cheat it the less real the surface is likely to look. So in metals, since they have a strong specular reflection, you must compensate that by reducing the diffuse. That's why in the above examples the diffuse is always black or close to black, the more specular reflection, the less diffuse.

Don't Use The 3DStudio Max Metal Material

Here's some tips about doing faked or environment mapped chrome in max. First off, a lot of max people think that to get good metal all you need is the metal shader inside the 3dsmax Standard Material. Seems logical, it is called Metal afterall. However, I highly recommend not using the metal shader EVER, due to the complete lack of control it gives you over the look of your material.

The problem is that with the max metal shader, if you increase the specular highlight, it automatically reduces the diffuse amount. But wait, isn't that what we want? Well yes, we do want a material with a strong highlight and almost no diffuse, but the problem is the "automatically" part. The metal shader in max is a vast over-simplification of a shader known as Cook-Torrance. Such a simplification, that it takes too much control from the user's hands. As an artist, we need to be able to control that diffuse amount so that a material can look the way we want it to under many lighting conditions.

The problem manifests itself like this. You make a metal shader, increase the highlight, think it looks all good, but then when you place it in your scene, you can place a light an inch from your model, crank its multiplier to like 1000, and still only see the highlight and no actual object (see the example below). Well, to make this look nice, we'll need to add a slight amount of diffuse in. But wait, adding diffuse means the specular will automatically get less. But I don't want that! Well too bad, you used the metal shader! One quick fix solution is to have two lights for every light in your scene, a specular only light and a diffuse only light. But that adds unneeded complexity, not to mention slower rendering.

Metal Shader 1

The solution is to throw away the metal shader, and use blinn for your metal materials, and manually follow the energy conservation laws. Here's how to make the conversion. Here's the max file that made the images below, max5: no_metal_shader.zip Open the file and follow along with the instructions below.

Slot 1 is a max metal shader (such as the one on the left in the image below). If you grab the diffuse color swatch of the metal shader, and bring its luminance value up and down. Notice how the highlight grows and shrinks. Do the same with the ambient swatch. Notice the slight change in overall color. So basically, the diffuse color is now the highlight control, the ambient color controls anything that is not highlight, and you no longer have any control over the diffuse. So your material might look fine in your default lighting setup when you make the model, but in complex scene lighting situations, you'll waste countless time trying to tweak that lighting. So lets change it over to Blinn. Copy your material to the next slot. Change the second material's shader type to Blinn. Notice the changes, the highlight looks smaller, and the diffuse got brighter.

Metal Shader 2

So the second material no longer looks like metal, but now you have full control over both the diffuse and the highlight again. The first thing to try is to get back to something that looks like our metal shader using the Blinn controls. Reduce the glossiness to 50, and bring specular level to 250. Take at look at your highlights, they're now about equal. Now bring your diffuse color to RGB 35, 35, 35. Notice the two materials look very similar now. The difference being if I now want to add some diffuse back into the material (or remove it) once I start lighting, I can.

Metal Shader 3

So in general, to make a blinn material look like a metal material, make the diffuse color close to black, push your specular level to 200-300 (for a large intensity), changing your glossiness changes the size of the highlight.

More modern materials like the Brazil Advanced Material in Brazil, or the VrayMtl Material in Vray, they have an automatic feature that will decrease the diffuse as you increase the reflection amount. First off, this is based on much better math than the metal shader, so it's not a bad idea to use it. But if you really want the extra control, there are ways around the automatic control. For example, in the Brazil Advanced Material, just switch the reflection mode from "Blend" to "Additive", now you can adjust the reflection amount separate from the diffuse amount. Just remember to try and keep that diffuse to specular balance we discussed before, or the material will look fake.

A final note, a guy named Michael Bailey did write an actual Cook-Torrance shader for 3dstudio max, available here. However, it's only available for max 4 and 5, it never got recompiled for later versions of max. Here's an interface shot...

Cook Torrance

Notice it has a specularity value as well as a specular level. If you need more diffuse color, you can reduce the specularity and then increase the specular level or index of refraction to keep a strong highlight while still retaining some diffuse shading, something the max metal shader can't do.

Polished Environment Mapped Chrome

The basic ingredients are as follows:

GGX Shader ideally (But Blinn or Phong will do)
Almost Black Diffuse (The brighter the Diffuse the more it will look like an alloy, ie, a mixture of a metal and another material)
High Specular Reflectivity
Almost 100% Glossiness
Turn off Raytracing
Fresnel Reflections, IOR between 6 and 20, attenuated by a Shadow/Light Map
Environment Map

First off, what's an environment map? Well, when you're doing raytracing, your material is reflecting the environment in the scene. But sometimes your object isn't in an interesting environment, or you don't have the extra rendering time to do real raytracing, in which case you use an environment map. An environment map is just a 2d texture that is a stand-in for the environment. Otherwise, everything else is the same, you control the amount your material reflects, just instead of calculating a real reflection of your environment, it uses the environment map instead. Ideally your environment map should have the same general colors and brightness as your real environment.

For example, here's a rather popular bitmap used in reflections that comes with max, I desaturated it for the image below:

Lake 03

Another note about Environment maps, instead of adding the map to the environment slot of your material, you can also place the environment map in the Environment map slot in the Environment dialog. This allows you to declare a global environment for all the materials in your scene. It will also show the environment in the background of your rendered image too, so if you don't want that, use the material slot instead. Also, if a material has an environment map in the slot, AND you have an environment map in the Environment dialog, the material will use the one in the material and disregard the one in the Environment dialog.

Now that we have the theory, lets show how to create the effect in 3d using a number of different 3d apps and renderers.

3dsmax's Raytrace Material in Scanline Renderer

Here's an example file to make a scene like the image above using 3dsmax's Scanline Renderer: polished_envmapped_chrome_scanline.zip (Requires 3dsmax 2014 or later, Scanline Renderer)

So to make this material, start with a dark diffuse and a white reflect color. Then the above environment map in the Environment slot. Then we need to turn off raytracing, so make sure the Enable Raytracing checkbox is unchecked.

Dialogue 1

Next, 2 falloffs in the reflection slot. Why 2, you may ask? Well, the first is our standard fresnel falloff to reflect the scene, but the second is a shadow/light falloff. What this does is makes sure it reflects the environment map only where the material's being hit by a max light. When doing pure raytraced chrome, you don't need this because you're getting a real reflection of your scene. Take the following example. Here's a reflective object in a simple scene.

Shadow Light 1

The environment is black on the right, and white on the left, and the reflection looks correct, since it's doing real raytracing. Now, lets replace the real raytraced reflection with an environment map.

Shadow Light 2

Wow, that material is glowing. It's because it's doing a fake reflection, and so doesn't realize there's a big black area on the right in the environment.

Shadow Light 2

Here's the material with the environment map, and a shadow/light and fresnel falloff. There's also an omni light on the left side of the image. While still a cheat, this cheat is far more convincing, because it's not reflecting the environment where there is no light.

You can also use a standard material to make chrome, however note that the standard material has a single reflection slot that holds both the thing the material should be reflecting (the environment map), and the intensity of the reflection (based on the luminance values of your bitmap). The raytraced material breaks that up into an environment slot, which controls what to reflect, and a reflect slot, which only controls how strong the reflection is using any black and white map (a colored map in this slot will also tint reflections, but that topic is beyond the scope of this lesson). I prefer using the raytrace material because it gives me 2 slots which means much easier control over my material, rather than trying to squeeze both functions into a single map like standard does.

3dsmax's Brazil Advanced Material in Brazil Rio Renderer

The Brazil material settings are almost identical to the raytrace material settings, the only real difference is how to turn off the raytrace reflections, just make sure Mode is set to "Environment Mapped" in the Advanced Reflection Params.

Dialogue 2

3dsmax's Arch & Design Material in mentalray Renderer

Again, very similar to the Raytrace material example. Place your environment map in the Environment slot. The Arch & Design material only requires a single falloff map set to "Shadow/Light", which you can place in the Reflection Color slot. Lastly, there doesn't seem to be a way in the Arch & Design material to turn off raytracing for just one material. So you'll have to turn off raytracing for the entire scene, which can be found in the Render Dialog, in the Renderer Tab, Rendering Algorithms, Raytracing, Enable.

3dsmax's VrayMtl Material in Vray Renderer

Use a VrayMtl Material, the diffuse is black, the reflect color is set to white. Env map in Environment slot. Turn off Trace Reflections. Falloff set to Shadow / Light in Reflect slot. Fresnel Reflections on, Fresnel IOR is set to 20.

Polished Environment Mapped and Raytraced Chrome

So this would be a combination of raytraced reflections AND an Environment map. Pretty easy to setup, just follow the instructions for the Polished Environment Mapped Chrome, and then don't turn off the raytracing control. That way, your material will do raytraced reflections of any objects in your scene, and for the furthest stuff it'll use your environment map.