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After some research on how to model reflective plastic surfaces best I established this as my surface: enter image description here

which I found in an older thread here: (https://blenderartists.org/t/cycles-glossy-plastic-material/582572/5)

If I turn the glossy BSDF dark there is no reflection what so ever.

What I want to achieve is something every close to this:

enter image description here

susu
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Liminarflow
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  • What are you trying to accomplish by mixing a difuse shader with a non-shader using fresnel as factor? – susu Nov 25 '20 at 22:34
  • I would suggest you play with a princlipled shader, with a low value for roughness. Also play with the specular value. And keep in mind that highly reflective need an environment to be reflected by the surface. In that sense you are not lighting an object but lighting the objects that are reflected on the surface Read: https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/48659/why-does-an-object-with-a-glossy-shader-render-in-black/50576#50576 – susu Nov 25 '20 at 22:40
  • https://blog.cmog.org/2019/09/04/photographing-glass-highly-reflective-black-objects-part-1/ and https://blog.cmog.org/2019/09/11/photographing-glass-highly-reflective-black-objects-part-2/ – susu Nov 25 '20 at 22:43
  • you can use a mix between Diffuse and Glossy, the color of the Diffuse is black, the Glossy is white, plug an Input > Layer Wieght in the factor or the Mix Shader. Or Principled BSDF with black as Base Color and a very low Roughness. That would be the basic setups... – moonboots Nov 25 '20 at 22:56

2 Answers2

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enter image description here

You can get this result with just the principled BSDF.

If you look closely at your reference image you'll see the environment. As mentioned in the comments those highlights are what we want to reproduce, and the ones you see in this image are coming from an HDRI environment texture. This isn't even a particularly good HDRI for taking an image of something so round, perhaps.

You could approximate this by setting up some large area lamps focused on your object.

Allen Simpson
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  • Thanks Allen! This is what I started with anyways. I had the feeling that the reflection was not strong enough. But maybe the environment was not the correct one.

    Do you have a hint where I might find good HDRI to start with?

     – Liminarflow Nov 26 '20 at 18:15
  • HDRIhaven.com has a bunch and they are licensed CC0 – Allen Simpson Nov 26 '20 at 18:38
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To add to Allen Simpson's answer, you can also do it with this node setup: Diffuse with black color and Glossy mixed into a Mix Shader, with an Input > Layer Weight > Fresnel as factor:

enter image description here

moonboots
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