Tweet
Well, hello everyone... I've came here to share one my idea about new approach in speedeing up of rendering of glossy reflections, an alternative to already cool 'Interpolation". I would like to note ahead that it is a fake, some kind of post-process, so it will NOT produce correct glossies, but it probably will make sense.
So, let's start. We all know about Z-buffer, and effects that could be achieved using it, such as post-process DOF. A good example of post-processing DOF, based on rendered image of Z-depth is Frischluft Lenscare. It makes DOF very close to real raytraced. So I thought, if we could somehow extract the "depth" of reflected objects inside reflective one, and then apply post process blurring using this mask.... I did this - with some tricky material setup I've created some kind of mask - a reflection of objects, which color fades away with their distance from reflective object.
here's the example: there are two reflective objects - sphere and box to the left of it.
this is how "reflection depth mask" look
here is an image after Frischluft Lenscare post processing
and this is ordinary Photoshop Blur, repeated several times.
As you can see, reflection gets blurred with distance, so....
This was done using only 256 color mask... But if it colud be done right inside 3ds max, using whole available range of information, the final result could be much more precise.
Thanks for paying attention.
p.s. happy holidays
Here's an example of using this technique for simulating glossy REFRACTION
). 
Comment