Black Duck

[glorybound]

refelction

I'll try it on my next one. It seems that most clients want all parts of everything to be the same. This might just add more information overload for them. They seem to focus on a small part of the image and say "that color isn't correct. look here is my swatch". They seem to forget about sun, light, reflection...

I am working on a church now and I'll use fresnel. This client is very easy to work with.

[joconnell]

Fresnel itself isn't the be all and end all either - a falloff map is as good since it's all down to the look you like in the end - you can get caught up on using fresnel with correct values but they're often a bum steer in terms of getting what you want out of it. Just bung in a falloff map into the slot beside the reflection colour swatch and leave fresnel off - control the lot by using the colour swatches of the falloff to set the min and max reflection with the curve controller how it changes between the two.

[glorybound]

Fresnel

I like the instant photoreal explanation better . Don't you use a falloff in the reflect slot and add a fresnel in the falloff type. This was my understanding.

[Jonferimonic]

I like the instant photoreal explanation better . Don't you use a falloff in the reflect slot and add a fresnel in the falloff type. This was my understanding.

If you are going to spend the 3 seconds to drop a falloff in your reflection you may as well turn it to fesnel while you're there as in my understanding fresnel is more physically correct than say perpendicular/parallel.

However, which type you use wont make a massive difference in your images, but not using reflection at all, will.

[rivoli]

a falloff map in the reflection slot it's a great help, not only you don't loose any photo-physic correctness when fresnel is checked, but you can also map the reflections. which can be a massive plus in terms of photorealism.

or, as John pointed out, you sometimes need to control reflections with a custom curve to simulate materials such as velvet which have abrupt changes in reflectivity at grazing angles.

[joconnell]

Yep it's just I find that there's too many other factors outside of fresnel that influence the look of an object - say for example if you have a reference photo that you want to match and you know the correct ior (fresnel value) of the object you're trying to match it won't always automatically look like the thing you want purely cos you popped in the right fresnel value - the environment it's reflecting and the surface properties of the object are going to have a huge influence on its look so sometimes I find that it's quicker to just use perpendicular / parallel which does fresnel type things, just in a more predictable way - so if you've got too much reflection on one end and not enough on the other you can just use your colour swatches or curve to add a wee bit more or less - slightly less fiddly than trying to use ior values to give you the results you want.