Mirror won't reflect outside scenic...

[Streetwise]

I've got an interior scene with a plane outside of the window with a bmp on a VrayLightMtl for the scenic. A mirror that is inside the scene renders the window, but not the scenic that is on the plane. Is this a materials setting for the mirror? Not sure where to begin.

Thanks!

Dave

[joconnell]

Might be a ray depth thing? You might need to up the refraction and reflection depth of the glass material for the window, and possibly the reflection depth of the mirror material - if you hide the glass plane does the mirror now reflect the scenic? Is it possible that it's just an angle thing? As in the angle you look through the window sees the scenic but the angle reflected in the mirror misses it slightly? I'd also try placing a huge sphere around your entire scene turned off to cast and receive shadows and GI, and assign a vray light material with an obnoxious neon colour on it - make it 2 sided and see if the mirror reflects your ugly colour. The angle you see in your mirror reflection is totally different to what you see straight through your window so you might not be getting the results you want.

[Streetwise]

Hmm.... I don't have any glass in the windows. In fact, I hid the windows altogether and still nothing. I thought about the angle issue, but made a second plane on an angle just to eliminate that theory. Next, I tried fiddling with the Max depth of the Reflection, all the way up to 10. Still nothing. Lastly, I made a sphere as you suggested -- VRayLightMtl, double-sided, chroma green. I turned off the cast/receive shadows (wasn't sure how to disable GI). I then hid my window scenics and rendered out the chroma green in the windows, nothin' in the mirror except a nice pure white...

So I'm thinking that the issue must be with the glass material on the mirror (although the laptop seems to have the same issue)

In the end, I want to be able to have a scenic in the mirror. In fact, if there's a way to create an alpha mask for the mirror reflection, that would be preferred as I'd like to do it in post (more control). I do have the Alpha contribution set for 0 for the scenic plane, so I am getting a nice alpha mask in the window. It's just that darn mirror....

I've attached some screen shots if that helps... You can see the image, the Planes outside of the window, the Mirror Glass Material, and the Mirror Surface properties.

Thanks!

[Streetwise]

Mirror won't reflect - SOLVED!!

Okay, so it turns out that a VRay Light Plane on the window, even though set to "Invisible", was obscuring the mirror reflection. So under options, I stumbled on "Affect reflections" and turned that off, and BINGO!!

Now for the next mystery... Is there any way to reflect the Alpha mask from the window scenic?

Thanks.

Dave

[Zdravko]

Is there any way to reflect the Alpha mask from the window scenic?

I'm not sure I understand your issue. Could you please clarify it a bit?

[Streetwise]

Okay. Let's say that I have a scene with a window, window scenic on a plane, and a mirror that reflects the window. For the window scenic on a plane, I have the "Alpha Contribution" set to 0 to create an Alpha mask in the final comp. Even though I have a window scenic in the shot, this is useful for further post work to the scenic if it has it's own alpha mask to work with.

For the mirror however, it would be nice to have that same Alpha mask available of the reflection of the window and window scenic within the mirror.

To sum it up, when I look at the test render in the VR Frame Buffer window and click the "Switch to Alpha Channel" button, I see the alpha mask for my window, but no alpha mask in the reflection of the mirror for the window. I'm just wondering if it's possible to have that happen.

Does that make sense?

[Neilg]

Save a copy of your scene, make the mirror fully reflective with a reflection depth of 1, apply a black material to everything else and set the reflection override to pure white.