Exterior Glass and reflections: What works for you

[saturn]

Hey everyone. I just wanted to know what works for you in terms of exterior glass and environmental reflections. I know there is no one way of doing...just curious. Thanks.

[bluescreen2]

second that *push*

[saturn]

Anyone?

[joconnell]

Well one major issue is the resolution of the maps you use - if you use one large spherical image in the environment slot then you're going to get problems where the image will look very pixelated in flat reflective surfaces such as windows. Rounded objects are taking reflections from a much wider area of the environment map so they dont suffer quite as much. For a flat object or a set of windows, a good idea is to make a plane object off camera with an image mapped onto it which will act as something for the windows to relect - you can have this object turned off to GI, shadows and so on. Because all of the detail in the plane object is directly facing your windows, its perfectly aligned to show up in the reflections of your window objects and you'll get decent quality.

[saturn]

Thank you for the reply, joconnell. You raise a good point about mapping the environment to a plane.

[Neilg]

falloff reflection with the highlight (not glossiness)at .9, maximum refraction. Play with fog a bit too to get some nice effects.
Roughly photomapped buildings work really well, as do photos mapped onto planes with various modifiers.

By no means perfect, but a good place to start.

[saturn]

Nice!

[DZL]

Good tips so far -

I increase my index of reflection of my glass to about 3.0 (default 1.6), then save out my reflections seperately.

Then, in photoshop, I take the reflections pass and add it as another layer, adjust my levels (boosting the saturation), and setting the layer as a 'screen' layer. And finally adjust the overall opacity of that reflection layer as needed.

[Repenseks]

Hi guys,
lately, I choose in Vray setup, under environment (both slots- instanced copy), where it sais none, you choose HDRI, then instance copy to material slot, change to spherical; this way windows are going to pickup reflections from the hdri, of course, you have to "increase" reflection color inside glass material. More towards white, greater reflection...

Regards
Srdjan

[Neilg]

you choose HDRI, then instance copy to material slot, change to spherical;

Would this not remove all the other reflections fom the glass though?

[Repenseks]

No, it wouldn't, persumes HDRI as environment, same as you put cylinder around the scene and apply map. So whatever objects are in the scene will be reflected too

Regards
Srdjan

[Neilg]

Ahh, thats what I do anyway, sorry I misread - I assumed you were putting it in the reflection area of the material.

(Not had much sleep, so ive been mis-hearing and reading everything today. )

[Repenseks]

Hey cubiclegangster, it happends to me very often

Regards
Srdjan

[saturn]

Hey guys. I just wanted to thank all of you for sharing your methods. I hope this post can help people in the future.

[domi]

nice tips