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Originally posted by Firebird:
**I'd recommend rendering something simple, like a cube, and play around with both the texture and the light. Different textures will look different under different levels and types of light.
It's really up to you to judge what looks good/realistic or not, because if you look at different graphics from different games and movies, metal has a very wide range of appearance. Personally I think it requires a mild shine, and shouldn't be too dark under light, but keep in mind space is dark.
**
Because of the way Bryce sets things up, you likely want to use a specularity MAP. If you just set specularity (especially if you set it too high) your ship will look like plastic. But it you have a hull plating graphic (basically, a bunch of overlapping rectangles in various shades of gray) it will be a much more realistic effect.
I personally shy away from Ambience except for glow effects -- instead I create extra lights and place them to lighten the shadows a little. For really nice glow effects, duplicate the whole object, make it bigger, set it to Fuzzy and Additive and dial the transparency up to about 95%.
Try the Bryce forum (Delphi forums); the people there are friendly and eager to help. Here's a couple of quick images I did while working on a plug... (url="http://"http://home.earthlink.net/~nomuse/p2.JPG")http://home.earthlin.../~nomuse/p2.JPG(/url) (url="http://"http://home.earthlink.net/~nomuse/ivoyager.JPG")http://home.earthlin...se/ivoyager.JPG(/url) (and yes, that is a flying mouse. If I ever finish the plug, it will all be explained.)
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Fruit flies like a banana.