Hilight Intensity Setting?

[Teriander]

As you know, In Vray when you want to adjust Reflection and Hilight Intensity you do so by adjusting the reflect color values 0-255. But this adjust both the reflection and hilight. Is it possible to have a strong reflection and a weak hilight intensity?

I know I can adjust the hilight glossiness which will increase the spread of the hilight, but what I want to have a soft hilight with a stronger reflection. How would this be possible?

[jstrob]

You could use a blend material with shellac option on. The base (with diffuse set to black) is the reflection and the coat is the highlight. Maybe that's what you are trying to achieve. that's the way to have 2 differents speculars. I noticed almost every material needs this to look real.

[Teriander]

I guess a blend material could work. Im a little surprised that an option like this isn't part of the default with vray. I mean it has a color value for reflection and refraction, why not hilight as well? But anyway, thanks for your reply! I'll use your method.

[jstrob]

In fact if you look carefully at any "highlight" in the real world, you will notice that it is in fact the reflection of something more or less blurred depending of the glossiness of the surface. The highlight you are talking about is the specular added by the light which represent a fake reflection of this light. If you want to do something photoreal, i would suggest you forget about those fake reflections and just try to recreate the real world more closely. I mean turn off specular in the light settings and create an light or a sun to be reflected by you surface. you can do this in a spherical HDR environment or mapping a photo of a real spot mapped on a plane that you place at the right place and use an alpha to blend it with your spherical environment.

And if in a surface you have have two different glossiness, which is quite common in lot of materials, that means that you have two layers in the material. Sometimes a base and a varnish. What leads us to the blend material.

And a last tip: when you try to create real life coated material you will want to play with the fresnel reflections and index and keep in mind that the refraction index is also changing something even if you have no refraction.