Hello,

Happy to see that you are having fun with it. I'll try to answer your questions.

1. LEGO elements and especially default bricks are super reflective. People don't realise it. Here is a photo I just took and you can clearly see the reflection in the door.
   

My material set up aims at reproducing real elements. If for artistic reasons you may want to tweak it, you will need to understand how the materials are built. Roughness comes from multiple sources and is controlled for each part type independently as well. A quick and dirty way is to find the root group e.g. mb_base_solid and add a math node. However it will impact every single element using this group.

2. By default mecabricks design doesn't include general bevels. Geometry is built using sharp edges. To make part more realistic - sharp edges do not exist in real life - a bevel shader which fakes a 0.35mm bevel is applied automatically for all materials. You can turned it down if you wish.
   Flat tiles do include a chamfer (not round edges) which is represented as real geometry in Mecabricks. Trust me on this one. I have spent years at reverse engineering LEGO elements. TLG also builds this chamfer in their 3D models.

Even if it doesn't look like it, there is always a reason and some thoughts put in every single value or decision I made 😉 Nothing is there by accident. I try to be as accurate as possible to real life. However it is not always what is required from an artistic point of view e.g. LEGO products renders which are not accurate to real life and shall just look good to make you want to buy the product.

Hope it helps

Thanks so much for your response! Please don't take my questions as critiques of your plugin in ANY way. I think the work you have done is fantastic, and I am very humbled by your generosity at making this plugin available to the public. Perhaps I need to re-look at my approach to setting up the scenes and maybe the HDRIs I am using. Perhaps this picture from my scene will clear things up a bit to what I mean:

I have circled in red where the reflections seem a bit too high/weird, and I have circled in yellow where I believe the space between the tiles is too large. As I have said, I COULD be wrong, but after taking thousands of pictures of LEGO for stop-motion over the years, I can't really remember tiles having that large of a space between them. I will definitely have to try changing my HDRI, but hopefully this gives you a better idea of what I mean. Do you perhaps have some good HDRIs you recommend?

It is all right. This kind of question is being asked all the time. So at least I can refer to this post in the future.

The reflection on the black parts comes from the studs below and it doesn't feel wrong. In reality, older parts may be scratched, have finger grease or dust which considerably reduces the reflection. Also the materials used by LEGO - mainly ABS nowadays but not only - and the finish of the moulds are constantly changing.

Regarding the tiles, I took at couple of pictures to prove my point. They do have a chamfer on the top. I have very accurate means of measuring it. Space scenes often have the light at a very low angle - like on your image - which emphasises the shadows in the gaps. I did the same on my picture with a LED lamp almost parallel to the tiled floor. The result is very similar to your picture above.

I stand corrected. Thank you so much for the demonstrations. I really appreciate the time, and I will let you know once I've got something rendered out worth showing. Thanks again!

Have fun 😉