How do we make our objects Metal or Chrome and Glass?

Hello there!

I will be more than happy to help with this. 

Theres a lot of things to consider when trying to use textures for this process, one being is what kind of textures are you using? and have they been channel packed? 

What is Channel Packing?

It's basically taking a base color texture and combining with a roughness texture into an alpha channel (greyscale), This process can be done in a few different ways

Photoshop:

• Open your Base Color texture in Photoshop.
• This texture is in RGB mode, meaning it has three color channels (Red, Green, Blue).

Add Roughness to the Alpha Channel:

• Open your Roughness texture in Photoshop.
• Press Ctrl + A to select the entire image and Ctrl + C to copy it.
• Go to your Base Color image tab.
• Open the Channels Panel (Window → Channels).
• Click the "Create New Channel" button (this creates an Alpha channel).
• Press Ctrl + V to paste the Roughness texture into the Alpha Channel.

Substance Painter: 

• Open your Substance Painter project.
• Make sure your material has the necessary maps (Base Color and Roughness) applied.

Create a Custom Export Preset:

• Go to File → Export Textures
• Under Output Templates, click + to create a new preset.
• Name it something like "Horizon Outputs".
• In the Output Maps section, click Add Output Map.

Assign the Texture Channels:

1. Click Add RGB+A (Bitmap) to create a new texture output.
2. Click on the new output and rename it to something like Texture_BR.
3. Assign channels as follows:
   • RGB → Base Color (Drag Base Color into RGB).
   • A (Alpha) → Roughness (Drag Roughness into the Alpha channel).

Then Export! 

Or you can use an online texture packing service! 

Here are a few:

https://polycount.com/discussion/224942/easy-channel-packing-tool

https://defconnet.work/en/texture-channel-packer-en/

Hope this helps!

Thanks for providing the files. I noticed two things:

* FBX files materials:

All the examples that you shared had 2 materials. While this is permitted, for simple transparencies you don't this. You only need to assign one material, named with the _Transparent suffix. For example: Cube_Transparent

* Textures:

The textures that you shared are completely white, both the _BR and the _MESA. With the Transparent Materials type, the BR texture will contain the color information and Roughness. Considering this, your _BR file is ok.

Now, with the _MESA file, what you expect is a grayscale image that determines the level of transparency of the color. Think about it as a filter, controlling how much color can be rendered. This, however, it's not as easy as creating a grayscale image, this has to added to the correct texture channel, in this case the alpha channel. It's common to use Gimp, Photoshop or Substance Painter for this task. I also recommend this open-source solution, where you can plug in the attributes in the different channels, and export it as a single png texture: GitHub - Fidifis/TextureMerge: pack/merge textures into image channels.

I sent you an example; it's a simple plane with different transparency levels. These are the file names:

I tried this as well. My object comes out as flat as a tire... SMH. No gloss or shine whatsoever