Reflectivity being a "problem child" to me

[N-drju]

I'm really annoyed with the reflective shader and trying to achieve some types of materials with it.

Let's say that I want to create a decorative chrome or golden plating. That's hardly a problem - the default reflective shader does the job well and the reflected images are sharp as they should be.

However, now I want to create a wooden floor which has some reflectivity but nowhere near the one that chrome has.

The question is: how do I get my reflections look blurry.

I've tried several options including reflection softness (which sucks big time, probably a "joke option") and none of them really works.

Mind you I wish to obtain blurry reflection on a smooth surface. Not a rough one. Reflection softness and reflection roughness are two different things.

[N-drju]

Basically something that will look like this...



...but in a standard renderer. Unless of course you Guys at Planetside have completely given up on STD.

Bottom line - I'd like to be able to control the sharpness of my reflections without necessarily affecting the roughness of a material.

[Kevin Kipper]

Hi N-drju,

We've recently updated the wiki documentation the Reflective shader: 
https://planetside.co.uk/wiki/index.php?title=Reflective_Shader

At the bottom of the Main tab section you'll find this description for the Reflection softness parameter:
This setting only applies to the Standard renderer, and is ignored when using the Path tracer. Together with the "Number of samples" setting on the Quality tab, this setting controls the blurriness of the reflections. The default value of "0" results in sharp reflections and uses only one sample regardless of the number of samples chosen. Although the slider allows for a large range of values, the recommended range is between 0.0 to 0.1.

Right below that, on the Quality tab you'll find the description for the Number of samples parameter:
This setting controls the quality of the soft reflections, which occur when the "Reflection softness" value is greater than "0". The default value is "4" and raising it will take additional samples leading to a smoother blurred result, at the cost of longer render times.

Example images are included as well on the wiki page.

Hope this helps.

[WAS]

Specular roughness, but with SR, I think things do not get blurry without microdisplacment, since smoothing is kinda a mess and doesn't work as you would need.

[WAS]

Weird. When you posted Kevin I was getting 500 errors, and finally after 4 refreshes it posted and found your post.

[N-drju]

Hi N-drju,

We've recently updated the wiki documentation the Reflective shader:
https://planetside.co.uk/wiki/index.php?title=Reflective_Shader

(...)

Hope this helps.

Hello Kevin,

Sorry, but no - this does not help. I've already gone through this information more than once and the effects of reflection softness and quality combined are pretty disappointing. Consider the examples below to see how anti-fun it is:


Softness 0.2  48 samples


Softness 0.08 24 samples

Seriously, please do something about it. I have no interest in path tracing every single image. I don't want to path trace my renders just to get reflections right.

Specular roughness, but with SR, I think things do not get blurry without microdisplacment, since smoothing is kinda a mess and doesn't work as you would need.

Yes, I do indeed microdisplace on most occasions and the results are pretty cool indeed. However, It does not work well with surfaces which are smooth but project blurry reflections, like the one below:



As you can see, the color of the sky and surrounding area is noticeable but far from mirror-smooth, which is what I'm after.

[WAS]

You need minuscule values, and have to adjust for quality. You won't be spying the effect with quick renders.

You can also combine this with low level smoothing of the reflection shader.

Unfortunately with microdisplacement, ray detail multiplier comes into play.

But with SR these are your options. These are limitaitons of the renderer. Think about using more modern standards, like Path Tracing.

[WAS]

PS honestly, your example image looks like mostly just specular highlighting, then chromatic reflections. You could accomplish similar with ray traced reflections simply disabled.

[N-drju]

But with SR these are your options. These are limitaitons of the renderer. Think about using more modern standards, like Path Tracing.

If there is just one surface that looks better in a scene which otherwise does not benefit from being path-traced, then I won't use PT. Simple as that.

[WAS]

Everything benefits from PT in TG, technically. Lighting highlights, shadows, reflections, etc.

You want real reflections, but won't use a physically correct renderer. Doesn't make sense. Even the default scene has differences between SR and PT when a 32bit noiseless render is compared to SR. Most people may not be keen to notice them, but they're there.

[N-drju]

I just don't like the idea of increasing render time considerably where the change is visible only in one particular element while hardly noticeable in other. PT does not change that much in my current scene which takes place in broad daylight and uses very simple lighting. I already tested it and can't see any difference.

If there was a way to render some elements in STD and some in PT, that would be super. Otherwise...

[WAS]

You could try using exporting your scene and importing it for PT. Much faster renderers not taking into account miniscule scales. This helps speed things up. Also taking care in your scene creation and making sure scales aren't needlessly small helps too. As what's happening is there is more bounce and calcualtion happening with smaller disp scattering rays.

[WAS]

But isn't this similar to what you want? Reflecting the lighting around like it's a stained and sealed wood?

That's just the default shader

[Dune]

I'd say the same as Jordan, just use non-RT reflections either in reflective shader or default shader, perhaps giving reflections a different hue, or change the roughness, or mask in several types. Fast too. Use RT reflections sparingly where needed.
The smooth setting is best at low values, like 0.04 (or perhaps it was even 0.004).