stainless steel renders black in ray trace

[Kevin J]

When I do an interior ray trace of a kitchen, the stainless steel appliances (both Viking objects and standard) appear black. Also, the room appears quite dark. I have quite a bit of lighting in the room and even added a bunch of bare bulb fixtures behind the camera to lighten things up. Does anybody have a way of adjusting the appearance?

Also, I'm looking for a wall mounted pot filler object.

My computer is a Dell Precision T3600, 4x2GB, 4 core Xenon E-5-1620, 3.6GHz, 10M, Turbo with 2 GB NVIDA Quadro K2000 graphics card.

Thanks for your help.

[David J. Potter]

Take some time and experiment with the Material Definition of your stainless. By teaching yourself what that dialogs' adjustments are for and what they do to the appearance of materials in terms of how reflective, how emissive it is and by adjusting your lighting are the keys to good imaging and appearance.
It is an Art that is learned by study and practice after study. There are no "tricks", there is knowing because you studied the data in the Reference Manual, understood that data well and then practiced with it until your own judgement then manifests itself.
It bloody well takes patience, persistence and stubbornness to arrive at high quality output images.

DJP

[dmfisher]

I have good luck with using this as my best stainless for appliances.
Select the appliance, go to Materials tab, select the main color, or whatever you want to change, click on Library Material, and type in

2178 - Brushed Stainless Steel

I think it shows up nicely in RTs.

[Chiefer]

When I do an interior ray trace of a kitchen, the stainless steel appliances (both Viking objects and standard) appear black. Also, the room appears quite dark. I have quite a bit of lighting in the room and even added a bunch of bare bulb fixtures behind the camera to lighten things up. Does anybody have a way of adjusting the appearance?

Also, I'm looking for a wall mounted pot filler object.

My computer is a Dell Precision T3600, 4x2GB, 4 core Xenon E-5-1620, 3.6GHz, 10M, Turbo with 2 GB NVIDA Quadro K2000 graphics card.

Thanks for your help.

Try to turn on Photon Mapping in the ray trace option > advance.

[Lin]

I wish I could remember who it is on here who recommended this and offered it to people -- if I do, I'll come back and post his name. Anyway, this has been a wonderful time saver for me. I downloaded it and added it to my user files (do you need info on how to do that?). I simply click and apply it to all stainless that shows. Works really well.

[Kevin J]

Thanks for the suggestions. The Material Definition dialogs were key to getting the desired effect