Making a Chrome Shader

Q: How do I make a chrome material?

Chrome - mia_material

A: Chrome is a highly reflective surface, but in the 3D world, a highly reflective shader looks kind of crappy without an environment to reflect, which is something that is taken for granted in the real world where we are automatically surrounded by tiles, ceilings, desks, windows, trees, sky, buildings etc. Making chrome is as easy as making a dark colored shader and giving it high reflectivity. Why make the shader dark? Because if you don't, the reflection will be added onto the color and the shader will look brighter and not as reflective as it should, its especially obvious on the standard Maya shaders [of course some degree of reflection blurring will make it look better -Mental Ray can do this but Maya Software renderer can't].

Brush Aluminum - mia_material