Hello guys,

I have a "little" problem here.

I am doing some rendering of chrome and want to achieve the look provided in the image theChromeLook.jpg but I cannot get even close to it...

You see, in the image render_0010.jpg there is my closes attempt to render lifelike chrome in SolidWorks but it's not good enough.

If you look at the image render_0012.jpg it's really bad. And if I render it perpendicular to the flat surfaces it's even worse. I cannot get past those dark reflections.

I am trying for days now to achieve the perfect look but simply cannot get to it with SolidWorks PhotoView. I even tried custom textures, I tried mirror, different materials, different environments, environmental rotations, scenes, lighting and went through every post on forums around this topic, but I can't find anything helpful.

I got to experiment with some reflection maps (setting them as the environment image in the edit scene... section) but they always get twisted in a kind of cone shape - I know, I know it's because of the environment, it's meant to be that way - but, how else could I get the reflection maps into the rendering? How else can I achieve those bright natural reflections that make chrome chrome. And, how can I achieve a flat reflection anyway - like in the image anotherChromeLook.jpg?

I tried to load a plain white image to the environment image for those bright reflections I need (like in the theChromeLook.jpg), but all I get is this sadness.jpg it's more satin look than chrome.

What am I doing wrong?

or is this really the frontier of SolidWorks rendering? chrome stuff...? I mean.. it's over 5k software...

Thanks in advance for your help,

Best Regards,

David