Silver Material

Silver is a bright, polished, cool-toned precious metal. It reflects its surroundings clearly, with just enough softness to look like real silverware or jewellery rather than a hard mirror.

Settings

• Roughness 0.15: polished. Reflections are sharp enough to recognise, softer than Chrome at 0.05.
• Env Map Intensity 1.6: strong reflections, second only to chrome in the family, which gives silver its bright shine.
• Color light neutral grey: a clean tint, without the faint blue of aluminum.
• Metalness 1: fully metallic.

Lower Roughness for a mirror polish; raise it to 0.3 or 0.4 for matte or brushed silver. A slightly darker Color gives an older, tarnished look.

Use it for

Jewellery and watches, cutlery and tableware, luxury packaging, awards, winter and festive scenes, and elegant silver lettering. Silver is the cool counterpart of Gold: where gold warms everything it reflects, silver keeps the scene's colours and adds brightness. Like all polished metals it needs something to reflect, so place it in an environment with contrast or under a few bright lights, and use curved shapes so highlights travel across it.