Achieving a realistic metal look

Maybe it just needs some sharpness and metallicity at the edges?

Here's what I got with a few additional steps, and leaving antialiasing off.

Looks good. I couldn't open the filter cos I'm on 1.0, but I looked at the xml in notepad and can see what's going on. I had a play with it on some otehr test images and it looked good.

I've already tried a few more adjustments, like I increased the tone veriation on the colour gradient and I changed the way it has the more polished patch in the centre. I also added some blackness to go along with the rust which gives it a more natural corroded look, rather than looking like rust coming from under peeling paint.

So, I added the sharpen and I got the high pass from the bits I was using for the metalic and reflective maps, so it gets all the edges without the colour variations messing it up. It still needs a bit more adjusting, it's coming up a bit intense at some of the edges, and the speed has taken a hit, so it needs more tidying up, but this is how it is so far.

I've been thinging about the scratch distribution, I already have the dirt so that it is in the corners and the edge of the frame, and the rust apears more in the edges. I did those, basicly by the fact that I already have a gradient to give me the edge, I just make a new gradient and subtract the frame from that, then add back a differnt gradient over the frame, so it goes up as it aproaches the edge, then drops to low when it actually gets to the edge. I can use the same gradient to exclude scratches from the inside edge,

I can locate all the rivet tops using the same tile component i drew them with too.

The high pass and sharpen were pretty lethal to the speed, so i'm going to steer clear of any more, and see if I can find an alternative to the high pass i have in there now..

Ass for the rivets tho... I am tempted to add an option to swap them for bolts or screws, although i'm wary of making the controls too crowded, i've already got a lot for all the grungey options.

I'll have to organise the internals a bit, i'd be too embarassed to submit it with all the jumbled mess it is at the moment, hehee

Sooo, I've dialed down the shinyness, but I think i've got a little far the otehr way now :S

I may have to add another slider...

I've adjusted the scratch drawing, I've now got scratches on the rivets, with twice as many on them as on the rest, and mor intense, and I've excluded scratches around the edges of the rivets and the inside of the border.

I added an option for rusty water streaks from the rivets, but I've done one from the top edge yet because the whole thing is getting waaay too cumbersome, I'm not sure of any way to do it without using motion blur and I think any more blur components will finish it off.

Anyway, here's how it is at the moment, I've managed to overdo the reflections a bit again, it's proving to be a bit tricky getting them right, the Anti-alliasing seems to make them more intense.

I did add a slider for rust streaks coming from the bolts but The one thing I don't like is that they reach the bottom and wrap back to the top. I played around a bit and they don't add that much so I've taken that out now. The way the rust is distributed the streaks didn't really fit with the regular rust and dirt anyway, so I've chopped it all, decided not to to over do it seeing as I have seperate controls for rust and dirt already. Maybe save streaky rust for another filter one day.

I've got the Rivets and the border on a slider, so you can change the rows and the number and size, and you can change the width of the border, so you can either of them all the way to zero and have just the rivets on flat metal or a border with no rivets.

I've pretty much finished for features n things, I'm just trying to get the thing to be a bit quicker, and refine the reflections n the highlight on the edges a bit. It's still very slow, and the reflections go a bit crazy at some angles, but well, I guess that's up to ppl to avoid those particular angles, lol.

Here's a bit of a differnet one I got out of it, a nice copper with green oxide. Was trying to see how versitle it could be and I think it's done pretty well.