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I'm new to blender and would like to reproduce the following image: enter image description here

I'm currently trying to use "cycles" in blender 2.83 and was wondering which combination of "surface", "Roughness" and "IOR" would you recommend? The issue that I'm currently struggling with is the reflection, there is too much!- But I would like to make the atoms look very shiny as in the picture.

Currently I'm using: Surface: Glossy BSDR Roughness: 0.000

enter image description here

Thank you!

chr218
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    If you want large reflections, use a large light source https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/48659/why-does-an-object-with-a-glossy-shader-render-in-black/50576#50576 – susu Nov 30 '20 at 20:49
  • @susu I'm using the "sun" as my light source. Would a "spot" work better? – chr218 Nov 30 '20 at 20:50
  • Use "large" light source, a large area light, not a spot or point or sun... and read the suggested link. – susu Nov 30 '20 at 20:52
  • As @susu suggests, a large area light... or maybe a plane with an emission shader. In the reference image you can clearly see that the reflected light source has a large rectangular shape. – Gordon Brinkmann Nov 30 '20 at 22:00
  • @GordonBrinkmann Everything I'm doing only seems to make it worse. -[https://ibb.co/ZcSgbcY] This is my setup-[https://ibb.co/Cv01zTP] I can reproduce the image if everything is laying flat on a surface, but I must reproduce this with a molecule within a tunnel of atoms. – chr218 Nov 30 '20 at 22:06

2 Answers2

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Another possible and slightly simpler node setup:

node setup atoms

Gordon Brinkmann
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If you're going for that "plastic ball" look, go with something like this for the material. (Same material for the red, just different color). Also, you can omit the refraction shader if you want, I just find it gives more of a "pale gloss" like your reference image.

Plastic

For the lighting in my example, I used this shader for the world, using a Light Path Node to give a white background with no emission. I then handled all the lighting by putting a large emission plane above the mesh.

PlasticLighting

If you want more of a glassy metallic look, you can try a shader like this instead:

Glassy

Christopher Bennett
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  • That "plastic look" is exactly what I needed! Thank you so much!!! – chr218 Nov 30 '20 at 22:16
  • Why bother mixing so many different shader nodes for this "pale gloss" look? I would take the Principled BSDF Shader and set the Roughness to something low like 0.1 or lower like 0.05 or even less, since the reflections are quite sharp. To make them "pale" I would reduce the Specular value to 0.2 or 0.1 or less instead of the default 0.5 and it should be okay. – Gordon Brinkmann Nov 30 '20 at 22:35