Help with textures

[ASYD]

HI everyone. Im new to lightwave 8 and i started to make this lamp. I've finished the mesh model and i was trying to put on the texture i got stuck. the base is a shinny silver or maybe chrome, but when i try to model it I get more of a gray, than a silver effect?
Can someone help me?

PS why is the texture in the modeler different than in the layout?

Thnx

[iggy21]

You can find a couple of tutorials on metallic textures, or you can press F9 to bring up the presets, and study their metallic textures, especially refelction (although dont like using the presets, you can always learna new technique or two if youre unfamiliar with texturing)

Also, If you're using alot of alpha layers or procedual layers, layout and modeler dont tend to show the same information (as i have noticed).. It might be different w/ you, but always use the sample render icon displayed in you surface properties to get a more accurate idea of your texture.

[loki74]

Well keep in mind that a reflective surface is only as good as what it is reflecting. If there is any way you can get a hold of an indoor HDRI that would probably be the quickest way to go. Conversely you could model/texture the rest of the room, so that the thing would have stuff to reflect.

As far as showing up differently in Modeler/Layout.. if you mean in the Solid Shaded viewports, as I understand it this is because the drawing methods in Layout are more advanced. If you mean in the surface editor, the surface editor in Layout will put the sphere in the environment that you have in layout, whereas modeler simply uses a gradient or black or whatnot. (ie if in layout you have 3 lights pointing in various directions, the surface preview in the surface editor will show the effects of thoe 3 ights)

Also, make sure that in your render options, you have ray trace reflections enabled. If your scene becomes much more complex it may also be a good idea to bump down the ray recursion limit to save some time on rendering.