How do I make the render lighting look like the materials preview lighting?

Question

Before I put in "studio lighting" (I followed this simple studio lighting tutorial, with 1250W area lighting from top, left, right) the metal texture looked quite good, however, once rendered in cycles the color seems to flatten/darken and not stay very "metallic" or textured:

The metal still looks alright in materials preview:

Wondering what can i change in lighting or shading so that the render looks more similar to materials preview, maybe even brighter without blowing out the colors?

What kind of metal? You issue is basically the lighting. The environment is kind of black (at this angle) in your render so make sure that's set up correctly. — brockmann, Apr 2, 2020 at 10:26

John · Accepted Answer · 2020-04-02 11:31:29Z

The materials preview is not, by default, an accurate read of your lighting because it uses an HDRI (high dynamic range image) to create the reflections you are seeing in the preview.

To fix this, open the Viewport Shading drop-down menu and (with Material Preview selected) you will see the two checkboxes for Scene Lights and Scene World. In this window, you can check Scene Lights to reflect YOUR scene’s lighting and Scene World to switch from the default HDRI to YOUR scene’s world (which I’m assuming doesn’t contain an HDRI).

The angle you are looking at, combined with mostly flat surfaces, without an HDRI, are what’s causing the flatness.

To fix this, start by beveling the edges of those sharp corners (it will add realism too). I would suggest adding a Bevel modifier to accomplish this.

Second, look into adding an HDRI so that the flat surfaces have something more nuanced to reflect.

Third, just make sure that your material’s Roughness value is low (.01 to .4ish) as well.

Fourth, in your Eevee settings (unless you are rendering in Cycles), make sure Screen Space Reflections is checked.

Hope this helps.

John

$\begingroup$ Thanks so much, each piece of advice really helped! $\endgroup$
– mig
Apr 2, 2020 at 21:16 — mig, Apr 2, 2020 at 21:16

Kelly · Accepted Answer · 2021-07-20 02:46:23Z

You can use any of Blender's pre-packaged lighting environments in your scene.

Example:

Starting with a basic material on Suzanne, looks great in Material Preview
Scene doesn't look right in Rendered Preview
Create a split screen, and change one area from 3D Viewport to Shader Editor.
Toggle Shader Type from Object to World.
Ensure Node Wrangler Add-on is enabled (Edit--> Preferences--> Add-ons--> Node Wrangler)
Select the Background node and press control - T (3 new nodes should "pop" up)
Click "Open" on the Environment Texture node to locate the HDRI
Navigate to wherever you have Blender stored on your machine to find the directory with Blender's lighting environments.
EX: Program Files/Blender-3.0.0/3.0/datafiles/studiolights/world
And now you can choose any of Blender's 8 HDRI environments available for your render.
Now switch to Render Preview in the Viewport Shading tab to see Blender's HDRI environments activated in your scene.
Render the image out to see the effect take place.