Rendering Black glossy writing for a logo...i'm stuck

Hello, I’m making a logo that needs to be very specific in lighting and colors and I’m having a REALLY hard time with the glossy writing part of it. I really need the letters to be glossy and shiny but they need to stay the black (I made it super dark grey because black was not reflective at all) and grey color they already are.


The lighting needs to stay the same for the capsule. I tried to bevel the letters to give them more edges but I’m getting no glossy effect at all because I probably don’t have enough lighting. And I don’t think I can add an hdri for the enviroment because it can’t have any images reflecting off it. I also can’t add a ground because it needs to be an alpha background. I also tried to put a plane in the middle of the words horizontally to give it a gradient effect, but it’s still not what their looking for…I seriously need some help, i’m stuck.capsule.blend (823 KB)

Attachments

capsule.blend (823 KB)

Are there any other ways anyone can think of to add gloss (Metallic if possible) to these words while going around all those commands? It doesn’t help that I’m not the greatest at lighting.

You can convert the text to a mesh and then use an image texture to drive the reflection.
You can make a new image to get the exact look you want. I didnt spend alot of time refining it.



capsule_gradient.blend (1.14 MB)

I would create a separate render layer for the text object and light it separately from the capsule, as the light is far too strong for the text material. you are getting the reflection but your having to compensate for the lighting, as a setting above .0003 starts to blow out the colour giving you too strong reflections. make the light for the text a lot weaker and give it a different angle so that it catches the edges more rather than just reflecting off the front face. with perhaps a softer complementary fill light on the opposite side.
to get a metallic look consider using an aniostropic node to affect the reflection. no i dont know how to set up the nodes, cycles is beyond me sorry!

Hey I’m not an expert, but I know the feeling of being Awfully stuck, and wanted to help you out. :slight_smile: Just check out this image:



It contains some light reflections from the edges of the text. I’ve changed a few things.

Moved the text to separate layer.
Added two mesh lights at top and bottom, angled.
Changed the black text material a bit, the glossy shader is totally black (reduce the blackness if you want) now, and I’ve added a new glass shader.
Changed the reflections to be sharp.

Normally I would render these two layers as different render layers and then combine them in compositing. But, mesh lights don’t confine lighting to a single layer. So you can do one of two things:

  1. Render the first layer, save as image, and then render second layer. In compositor, combine these the saved image with render layer. (Easy way, so I’ve done this :wink:

  2. Instead of mesh lights, use lamps, and select “This Layer Only” Checkbox. Render the render layers, and combine in Compositor.



    Don’t worry about the messed up text - I didn’t have this font. When you’ll open the blend file, you’ll get them organized.
    Here is the link to archive - it has three blend files (incremental updates to your blend file), and the images here.

I really hope this helps you. You can adjust the strength of mesh lights I’ve added to adjust the shine on text. Moreover, Change the material of “Capsules” to throw off more gloss if you like the text “Money”. If you need any help with render layers separation etc. let me know. MoneyCapsules Logo.zip (595 KB)

Hello Azorea,

I took a look at your blend file and made some tests, is this the kind of glossiness you were aiming for?
I used the Blender Renderer (BI) instead of Cycles because i think it’s easier and faster for this kind of stuff.
This is quite a simple setup without separate render layers, only the white background is added separately in compositing.


Click this one for full size


Here’s the blend file.
capsule1.blend (681 KB)

You probably will have to change or adjust the fonts as they rarely match between computers.

Cheers // Johny

Here’s a 100% crop of the glossy text.


Cheers // Johny

You all rock! You gave me some fantastic ideas and I got some good results. Now I’m just waiting for a reply from my customer, hopefully they like it! Thank you!

Hey, new to blenderartists here and I’m no pro by any means but perhaps these tips might also help in the future. I simply converted the text to a mesh like stated above, added a sub-surf (optional) and the key part, added a layer weight node set to (facing). Here’s a quick test render.




Those look great thanks. What does the weight node do?

Sorry for the triple post. :stuck_out_tongue: Setting the layer weight node to facing blends from the first shader to the second as the surface goes from facing the viewer to viewing it at a grazing angle. So by plugging it into roughness of a glossy node or Fac of a mix shader, you can achieve the sharp glossy reflections you get from the glossy shader set to 0, in parts that are reflecting light and still keep the more flat diffuse color where there is less or no light reflection.