Improving Final Renders - 3D for Graphic Designers - page 426

Learning from Presets
Presets can be excellent learning tools. Adding one to your scene will allow you to see how other artists
approach problems, and you may even notice ways that these can be improved. In addition to the presets
included with modo, many material presets (along with presets of other varieties) are available from the
Share section of the Luxology website ( www.luxology.com/asset ).
Now that the material has been inspected and properly adjusted, you can move on to do extra work on it.
First of all, the material looks good but does not appear connected in any way to the environment, beyond
the shadow that is being cast on the ground. Real concrete often has a sealer or other coating that picks up
small amounts of reflection. To remedy this, some subtle reflections will need to be added.
Figure 12-2: The rebuilt Concrete material applied to the sphere
To add subtle reflections, follow these steps:
1. Create another instance of the Diffuse Color layer and set it to Reflection Fresnel. This will likely
cause the reflections to appear very shiny, like wet concrete, as seen in Figure 12-3 .
Figure 12-3: Initially, the reflections give the appearance of wet concrete.