Not all polygons are reflecting the environmental texture, ideas?

Question

I've been for the life of me trying to figure this out, but can't seem to figure it out.

I want to make something that looks similar to this: So, This is what I've done. a) Gone into cycles, created a mesh, subdivided it (i.e., 10x), did a bit of fractal geometry (i.e., 0.25), and so I get a wavy mesh b) I then apply a glossy shader, add an environmental HDRI image texture

and the problem is, I get something that looks like this:

It's not "bad" - but not all the surfaces are reflected. "Some" of the surfaces are properly reflected (the environmental world map) - but other polygons are just SOLID colors.

Any idea how to "fix" the solid colors and make them properly reflect too? I've tried adding other planes to reflect against, but it doesn't seem I can get them all to have a reflected surface.

Thanks!

Answer 1

Mostly likely you need to smooth all the faces, some materials works with the geometry, like reflections or refractions. Then to get the desired shape and highlights, I would inset all the faces individually (I+I hotkey) to get the desired hard edges.

If you want you can bevel the edges but you will get some artifacts depending on your topology. And that black edge on top can be another material, give enough subdivisions, you can select the corner faces and apply a darker material, will look really close to what you want.

Hope it helps,