Mental Ray Arch and Design Chrome

We will create a material that looks like this render. The model is illuminated with a single spotlight:

Let's start out by making sure we are set up right for this tutorial.

Main menu/Customize/Custom UI and Defaults Switcher, set to Max, ame-light.
(This setup turns off mental ray so we can turn it off manually, plus sets up material that are easy for us to work with.)

Make a teapot with 16 segments.

Turn on mental ray:
Main menu: Rendering/Render Setup ...

Close the very large Common rollout
See the Assign Renderer rollout?
Click on the button below and select mental ray.

Open the material editor.
Select this material.
The yellow materials are new, and they appear because you selected mental ray as your renderer.

Select a template

Put Lakerem.jpg here:
If you can't find it, use LakeDusk.jpg in the Background folder in maps.

Look way down to the special purpose maps rolout.

Try setting up some variations of this material.
Try Brushed and Satined metal.
You will need to re-apply the environment material (lakedusk.jpg) with each new material.

This shows the satin metal template (I added a single spot light):

This is brushed metal (this one uses default max lights):

Try shift dragging to clone some teapots, making the 3 versions of chrome material, and adding another great looking material called car paint. Add a plane with a material and observe the reflections.

Add a key light (with a shadow) and a fill light ( .33 multiplier and no shadow.)

Don't forget to turn on overshoot in both lights (Spotlight parameters rollout.)

Set up the table with a simple material; I used a Standard material with a marble texture applied in the difrfuse slot:

Advanced and Optional: there are additional tabs in the Render Setup dialogue.
Find the tab named Renderer.
Open sampling quality.
Set up the renderer like this.
Your render will take longer and in some cases look better.

Tip -- I used a simple material here, but you could also try this material on the table for some great reflections:

Render as a jpeg and print from Photoshop as usual.