The following chart provides Diffuse and Reflection Color values that help you create realistic metallic shaders with V-Ray for Maya:
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 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 interface is taken into account.
The site RefractiveIndex.info is a great resource for understanding the proper IOR of different materials.
Note that in versions before V-Ray 6, update 1 the Fresnel IOR still plays a role for creating physically accurate metallic shaders even if the Metalness is set to 1.
For detailed information on the Metalness parameter, go to Understanding Metalness Chaos 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.