In your surface settings dialogue you have options to set up Internal/OpenGL surfaces or Cinerender surfaces.
Sounds like you are just setting up the internal/OpenGL surfaces.
Do that and then open the Cinerender version of that material.
You should see a button that gives you the option to 'match the surface from Internal'.
This will match all the basic settings but there are many more in Cinerender that will give you a much better surface material.
There is also an option to match the Internal surface from the Cinerender one so you can set up a very nice Cinerender surface and then match all the basic settings to your Internal/OpenGL surface.
Barry.
One of the forum moderators.
Versions 6.5 to 27
Dell XPS- i7-6700 @ 3.4Ghz, 16GB ram, GeForce GTX 960 (2GB), Windows 10
Lenovo Thinkpad - i7-1270P 2.20 GHz, 32GB RAM, Nvidia T550, Windows 11