Rubber (tire) material

[wannabeArtist]

Hi all,

I'm working on a car model and I'm quite a beginner with materials.

What should I start with to get realistic looking rubber material for the tires?
I will be rendering with Mental Ray, so I figured I might try the mia_material, but obviously some help to set up the various settings would be needed

Googling for this, I found a few ready made presets for mia_material, but they were only for Maya, in mel-script, I think.
Is there anything similar for XSI?

I'm using version 7.01

Thanks!

[Hirazi Blue]

In the attachment to this post you'll find a file called "mia_rubber.Preset". This is part of the "MIA_Presets" addon that was created by "Rork" and can be downloaded here. I detached this Preset from aforementioned addon, as installing it involves manually editing the "xsitb" file, which defines the toolbar, and some consider this too much effort .
The instructions, should you decide to try installing the addon, are, quoting Rork from this thread at XSIBase, are as following:

Due to the packaging system, there's one thing that has to be changed after installation. The toolbar still links back to the old folder location of the presets, so just open up the toolbar file (mia_presets.xsitb) and change the path to the presets folder

BTW @Rork - if you're reading this: I sincerely hope you won't mind! ;)

[wannabeArtist]

Thanks, Hirazi!

That will definitely help as I was getting kind of lost with Mental ray's 122-page documentation already

[wannabeArtist]

Woah!

These are fantastic! Thanks again for the tip!
(And big thanks to Rork, if he happens to read this


Here's a quick experiment on my (wip) car model (just couldn't stop at the rubber):