Reflections

[glorybound]

I have been struggling with V-Ray reflections for a while now. Something changed after NEXT, and I remember talking about it then. I have never figured out what was happening; I have been fixing reflections in post-production. Below is my RGB, with no reflection in my glass. Then my reflection pass with almost no reflection (except for grass), and then my specular. I have Forest Pro trees with the camera limit off, so the trees should reflect. Not only do I have trees surrounding the house, but I also have an HDRI with trees, and clouds. Full daylight and no lights inside, so my glass should be almost like a mirror. What am I not understanding?

[will_will]

Is this HDRI a dome light? Perhaps the "Affect reflections" unchecked.

[sirio76]

What happens if you use a simple physical sun/sky?

[Pixelcon]

maybe try switching off fresnel reflections on the glass to make it a mirror will help to diagnose your problem.

[vladimir_krastev]

HI thanks for posting. To me the renders look normal. It is a bit hard to tell without a scene though.

[Vizioen]

Like James said, if I want to check if the reflections are correct, I put a big plane with a mirrorlike shader in front of the subject, so you can see what it does. If this seems correct there's something wrong with your glass shader probably or maybe even the geometry (or a combination).

[glorybound]

I tested with a metal ball, and it looks like I would expect. Using a raw reflection pass seems to do the trick. I'll look into the other mentions. Thank you!

[theedge]

Hello,
Concerning the chrome ball test method, I find that it is usually not very useful to investigate for standard orthogonal architectural projects. The façades will have very few discreet orientations and thus very biased reflections.

[glorybound]

All I know is something changed after Next. I know they separated the reflection and the speculation in a unique way, which I think happened to try and fix fireflies.

[vladimir_krastev]

Hi the change came with V-Ray Next update 1.
Some of the render elements are rendered differently than before V-Ray Next update 1. The Lighting render element now contains all direct diffuse illumination and the GI element contains all indirect diffuse illumination.
Similarly, all direct reflections of lights now go to the Specular element and all indirect reflections go to the Reflection element.
Other possible causes for discrepancy between older/newer versions.