"james lake" <gum### [at] sprintmailcom> wrote:
> However, when I run the animation I notice the metallic surface of the object
> picks up the Greenish color of the background.  To prevent this, I chose these
> settings:
>
> But I am not happy with the result as it looks plain and gray.  What settings
> should I use to simulate an aluminum, metallic (only somewhat shiny) surface?

The only way to get a convincing metallic look is to have the object in question
reflect something.

I'd recommend placing a large around the scene and mapping a 360 degree
photograph onto it (a "light probe"), ideally using a HDR image (POV 3.6 does
not support this, but MegaPOV 1.2.1 or the 3.7 beta will both do the job). Use
an "ambient 1 diffuse 0 specular 0" finish, and the "no_image" and "no_shadow"
keywords.

This will make sure the sphere will show up in reflections, but neither cast
shadows nor be visible in the background.

BTW, if you leave the background completely blank and use the PNG output format,
you can directly generate an alpha channel, without resorting to a "green box"
approach. (IIRC you need to set some additional .ini option for this, but I
don't remember exactly which.)

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