The Index of Refraction plays an important role when creating a physically based material. Therefore, it has to be considered as part of the shader. The site RefractiveIndex.info is a great resource for understanding the proper IOR of different materials. However, inputting those numbers into a V-Ray shader will not match exactly. As such, Vlado has created this chart to help make the translation easier:
With metallic materials (having Metalness value of 1), the Fresnel IOR parameter in the V-Ray for Maya user interface is not used.
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 | ||||
For detailed information on the Metalness parameter, go to Chaos's blog post.
Useful information on metallic surfaces can be found at the Journal of Computer Graphics Techniques site.
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.