Metal Shading Practice!

[Pizza Tom]

Did this pipe for pixel dailies a bit ago, but I'm not quite satisfied with it. I realize there's a lot of colors - I was hoping to really go crazy on the reflections so I figured it was warranted. My main issue with it at the moment is the top "face" of the pipe.

[PypeBros]

the shading you have on the top of the pipe suggest rounded top, like at the top of a bottle. Mario pipes are typically shaded as if they had completely flat top.
possible reference

[MysteryMeat]

In some of the 3d games they do have a bit of a bevel at the edges, as seen here!



EDIT: haha wow, that sized itself perfectly to the forum width. Nice!

[Pizza Tom]

Alright, maybe I've just been overthinking this then. I mean, it is a flat surface, so logically it would all be one color, right..?

Tried another version where it's like half and half, but ehhh... don't think I'm on the right track here. My brain keeps wanting to interpret it as convex instead of flat.

[MysteryMeat]

You're actually pretty close! try removing the interior shading on that.

[Pizza Tom]

You're actually pretty close! try removing the interior shading on that.

Which one are you referring to?

In the meantime I tried these two versions. Trying to go for a slight bevel. I feel like I may be progressing backwards haha




Here's a version without the shading on the inside, though to me it looks more flat.

[PixelPiledriver]

It would be more natural to apply light on the bevels facing us.

[MysteryMeat]

EDIT: whoops, hit the post by accident.

What I did here was rework the shading to align more with the light source, which seems to be coming from somewhere to the left of the camera. I also added some spot-shine to the outer edge towards it.

[drain.]

The pipes from the Mario series never read to me as metal, I always saw them as plastic.

Either way, metal has very harsh highlights, meaning they're super bright and shiny, metal is also reflective, meaning it reflects any surface you put it on.


Above is a quick study I did to showcase how metal behaves. Notice how the highlights are super bright and it also becomes lighter the lower it goes, because, as stated, metal is reflective.

Coming back to my first sentence, I've always looked at the pipes as plastic because of how shiny and vibrant they are. There are no naturally green metals, so the pipes, if they were metal, shouldn't really be that shiny. Heavy-duty paint that are used on metals usually give a matte finish to the surface being painted.


Assuming there were metals that were naturally green, above is an sloppy edit where I made it super-shiny, the blue doesn't really come from anywhere and the pipe would most likely reflect the orange bricks.

[Pizza Tom]

Lots of great advice in here! Thanks guys! Hopefully this one puts enough of it to use to pass as metal now.

@drain, I increased contrast and tried playing with the shapes a bit more like in your edit. Hoping my highlights make more sense now. Re: the blue, wouldn't the pipe reflect the sky color as well?

@mystery meat, those rim highlights are exactly what I was trying to capture! Thanks!