Hello all,
  I'm a Povray newbie, and I've created an image, but it appears rather
flat. It would be nice to get a glossy look to it. I've played with
different settings on the lighting, but have had no luck. Any ideas or
suggestions?

Thanks,

Aaron

p.s. Here's the .pov file. http://aarondesk.pbwiki.com/f/jmol.pov

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aarondesk nous apporta ses lumieres en ce 15 / 05 / 2007 18:42:
> Hello all,
>   I'm a Povray newbie, and I've created an image, but it appears rather
> flat. It would be nice to get a glossy look to it. I've played with
> different settings on the lighting, but have had no luck. Any ideas or
> suggestions?
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Aaron
> 
> p.s. Here's the .pov file. http://aarondesk.pbwiki.com/f/jmol.pov
> 
> 
First thing: don't put the light close to the camera, it flatens things.
You use an orthographic camera, that kind of camera flaten things. Try a normal 
camera.
Adding specular or phong to your finish will give a shiny/glossy look to your 
objects. The highlight of "specular" is controled by roughness (small value give 
small highlight, large values give broad oned). The highlight from "phong" is 
controled by phong_size (LARGE values give tight highlights).
Changing brilliance affect how the angle of incidence of light affect the aspect 
of the surface. At 0 (zero), the angle between the light source and the normal 
have no effect. It default to 1, and you can increase it to any value you want. 
Adding metalic to your finish will colour the highlights acording to the 
pigment, otherwise, they take their colour only from the light_source colour.
Try droping the ambient. At 0.2, it tends to flaten things. Try something like 
finish{ambient 0 diffuse 1 <the rest of the texture>}
You may want to remove "shadowless" from your light_source. In that case, adding 
a second light may be necessary.

Please experiment!
You can use multiple light_source and give them some colouring.

Once you are comfortable with those elements, you can start experimenting with 
reflection and it's options.

I get a prety result with:
finish{ambient 0.04 diffuse 0.96 brilliance 1.5 specular 1 roughness 0.001} Note 
that I removed metallic.
I also added a second light as:
light_source{<-1000,7,500>rgb 0.3}
I gained some dephness by removing orthographic from the camera deffinition.

-- 
Alain
-------------------------------------------------
Hedonism: There is nothing like a good shit happening!

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Shadowless lights are "fill" lights, to get highlights
use a standard light, and put no_shadow on your
objects instead.

Alain is right about the metallic finish too, the metallic
keyword causes the highlight to be colored the same
color as the object, however pure red <1,0,0> is
saturated (it's already the brightest red color). You
can remove the metallic keyword, and let the highlight
be white, or you can use a darker red that isn't saturated
like <0.8,0,0> and have bright red highlights.

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http://warp.povusers.org/povtips/

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Excellent tips from everyone- thank you!

Aaron

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