The following chart provides Diffuse and Reflection Color values that help you create realistic metallic shaders with V-Ray:
Name | Base (diffuse) color | Reflection color | Metalness | Base color (web) | ||||||||
Red | Green | Blue | Red | Green | Blue | |||||||
Silver | 252 | 251 | 250 | 255 | 255 | 255 | 1 | fefefd | ||||
Gold | 244 | 202 | 104 | 255 | 250 | 195 | 1 | fbe6ab | ||||
Copper | 238 | 159 | 137 | 254 | 231 | 216 | 1 | f8cfc2 | ||||
Aluminium | 231 | 233 | 235 | 245 | 250 | 252 | 1 | f5f6f6 | ||||
Chromium | 142 | 141 | 141 | 145 | 142 | 176 | 1 | c5c5c5 | ||||
Lead | 168 | 169 | 176 | 191 | 192 | 209 | 1 | d4d5d9 | ||||
Platinum | 244 | 238 | 216 | 254 | 253 | 249 | 1 | faf8ee | ||||
Titanium | 246 | 240 | 209 | 254 | 254 | 250 | 1 | fcf9ea | ||||
Tungsten | 236 | 213 | 193 | 251 | 241 | 218 | 1 | f7ece2 | ||||
Iron | 227 | 224 | 211 | 242 | 245 | 244 | 1 | f3f1eb | ||||
Vanadium | 242 | 228 | 199 | 254 | 251 | 242 | 1 | faf3e5 | ||||
Zinc | 223 | 222 | 218 | 245 | 247 | 249 | 1 | f1f0ef | ||||
Nickel | 227 | 220 | 193 | 245 | 245 | 237 | 1 | f3efe2 | ||||
Mercury | 199 | 199 | 199 | 224 | 232 | 240 | 1 | e5e5e5 | ||||
Cobalt | 175 | 168 | 158 | 205 | 205 | 208 | 1 | d8d4cf | ||||
* The exact hex values for V-Ray for Houdini can be found here: Metal Shaders
The Index of Refraction (IOR) plays an important role when creating a physically based material and has to be considered as part of the shader. For metallic materials (having Metalness value of 1) it is automatically calculated from the Diffuse and Reflection colors: see the Artist Friendly Metallic Fresnel paper. For materials with Metalness < 1, the Fresnel IOR parameter from the V-Ray interface is taken into account.
The site RefractiveIndex.info is a great resource for understanding the proper IOR of different materials.
Note that in earlier V-Ray versions the Fresnel IOR still plays a role for creating physically accurate metallic shaders even if the Metalness is set to 1.
Useful information on metallic surfaces can be found at the Journal of Computer Graphics Techniques site.
For detailed information on the Metalness parameter, go to Chaos blog post.
Examples
Below are some examples and their settings.
Diffuse color (142, 141, 141), Reflection color (145, 142, 176), Glossiness 1
Chromium
Diffuse color (244, 202, 104), Reflection color (255, 250, 195), Glossiness 1
Gold
Diffuse color (227, 220, 193), Reflection color (245, 245, 237), Glossiness 1
Nickel
Move the slider to see the example renders.