# Hiding vraylight from reflection **URL:** \ **Category:** Render Theory\ **Created:** [July 29, 2007, 11:27am UTC](https://forums.chaos.com/t/hiding-vraylight-from-reflection/15182 "2007-07-29T11:27:10Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![bakbek](https://dub1.discourse-cdn.com/chaosprd/user_avatar/forums.chaos.com/bakbek/32/73248_2.png) [@bakbek](https://forums.chaos.com/u/bakbek)\ **Post date:** [July 29, 2007, 11:27am UTC](https://forums.chaos.com/t/hiding-vraylight-from-reflection/15182/1 "2007-07-29T11:27:10Z")
how can i prevent the vraylight from showing in reflections ---
**Author:** ![instinct](https://dub1.discourse-cdn.com/chaosprd/user_avatar/forums.chaos.com/instinct/32/74489_2.png) [@instinct](https://forums.chaos.com/u/instinct)\ **Post date:** [July 29, 2007, 11:40am UTC](https://forums.chaos.com/t/hiding-vraylight-from-reflection/15182/2 "2007-07-29T11:40:50Z")
Set “Affect Specular” to off in the light’s settings Thorsten ---
**Author:** ![dimo](https://dub1.discourse-cdn.com/chaosprd/user_avatar/forums.chaos.com/dimo/32/55255_2.png) [@dimo](https://forums.chaos.com/u/dimo)\ **Post date:** [July 29, 2007, 12:01pm UTC](https://forums.chaos.com/t/hiding-vraylight-from-reflection/15182/3 "2007-07-29T12:01:38Z")
Hi, another trick is to hide it behind an object with primary visibility off. Dieter ---
**Author:** ![jacksc02](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/779978/32.png) [@jacksc02](https://forums.chaos.com/u/jacksc02)\ **Post date:** [July 29, 2007, 11:26pm UTC](https://forums.chaos.com/t/hiding-vraylight-from-reflection/15182/4 "2007-07-29T23:26:06Z")
i believe there is an option to turn this off in newer builds ---
**Author:** ![bakbek](https://dub1.discourse-cdn.com/chaosprd/user_avatar/forums.chaos.com/bakbek/32/73248_2.png) [@bakbek](https://forums.chaos.com/u/bakbek)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2007, 12:15am UTC](https://forums.chaos.com/t/hiding-vraylight-from-reflection/15182/5 "2007-07-30T00:15:11Z")
> [@instinct](#): > > Set “Affect Specular” to off in the light’s settings > > Thorsten that did the trick, thanks… ---
**Author:** ![davidr](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/3ab097/32.png) [@davidr](https://forums.chaos.com/u/davidr)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2007, 4:10pm UTC](https://forums.chaos.com/t/hiding-vraylight-from-reflection/15182/6 "2007-08-24T16:10:57Z")
If you turn off specular, none of your geometry will reflect this light, and it looks really bad compared with leaving specular on; I don’t get why this changed from 1.4x to 1.5 -it’s a real problem that needs a fix. ---
**Author:** ![percydaman](https://dub1.discourse-cdn.com/chaosprd/user_avatar/forums.chaos.com/percydaman/32/42214_2.png) [@percydaman](https://forums.chaos.com/u/percydaman)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2007, 6:04pm UTC](https://forums.chaos.com/t/hiding-vraylight-from-reflection/15182/7 "2007-08-24T18:04:55Z")
> [@davidr](#): > > If you turn off specular, none of your geometry will reflect this light, and it looks really bad compared with leaving specular on; I don’t get why this changed from 1.4x to 1.5 -it’s a real problem that needs a fix. actually thats incorrect. It just wont reflect a ‘fake’ specular. When I use real geometry lights, i frequently turn off all specular fake highlights in my vray material as I’m getting proper specular reflection with my geometry light. ---
**Author:** ![davidr](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/3ab097/32.png) [@davidr](https://forums.chaos.com/u/davidr)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2007, 6:15pm UTC](https://forums.chaos.com/t/hiding-vraylight-from-reflection/15182/8 "2007-08-24T18:15:18Z")
I’m not using any fake spec in my mat, just blurry reflect and refl map, ie: reflect is more than 0, refl glossiness is usually less than 1, and sometimes there’s a map in the reflect slot (also diffuse and bump) -that’s it, very basic. By fake spec, do you mean hilight glossiness -I never use it. I also have another light issue to do with light size and intensity. In 1.4x I used a big vray light, 48x5" mult 18, and because it’s reflecting, I replaced it with 2 1x1" mult 900 vray lights, because that’s the real light size, so if it reflects, fine. The problem is that I get zillions of 1 pixel white spots. Any ideas? Thanks. btw, how the f do I post an image without a url? I don’t?[/url] ---
**Author:** ![Morbid\_Angel](https://dub1.discourse-cdn.com/chaosprd/user_avatar/forums.chaos.com/morbid_angel/32/21272_2.png) [@Morbid\_Angel](https://forums.chaos.com/u/Morbid_Angel)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2007, 6:25pm UTC](https://forums.chaos.com/t/hiding-vraylight-from-reflection/15182/9 "2007-08-24T18:25:29Z")
> [@percydaman](#): > > > [@davidr](#): > > > > If you turn off specular, none of your geometry will reflect this light, and it looks really bad compared with leaving specular on; I don’t get why this changed from 1.4x to 1.5 -it’s a real problem that needs a fix. > > actually thats incorrect. It just wont reflect a ‘fake’ specular. When I use real geometry lights, i frequently turn off all specular fake highlights in my vray material as I’m getting proper specular reflection with my geometry light. this is actually also incorrect 🙂 What david said is also incorrect, but allow me to explain: The way vray treats specular and reflection is not a separate components. There is no separate reflection and specular. What vray does is treats these like direct and indirect reflection. Where direct reflection is a specular, and indirect reflection is a reflection of objects. Furthermore, the reflection and specular are mixed together to return correct result. One without the other is not an accurate result. Mental ray arch material works the very same way. ---
**Author:** ![percydaman](https://dub1.discourse-cdn.com/chaosprd/user_avatar/forums.chaos.com/percydaman/32/42214_2.png) [@percydaman](https://forums.chaos.com/u/percydaman)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2007, 6:33pm UTC](https://forums.chaos.com/t/hiding-vraylight-from-reflection/15182/10 "2007-08-24T18:33:38Z")
> [@Morbid Angel](#): > > > [@percydaman](#): > > > > > [@davidr](#): > > > > > > If you turn off specular, none of your geometry will reflect this light, and it looks really bad compared with leaving specular on; I don’t get why this changed from 1.4x to 1.5 -it’s a real problem that needs a fix. > > > > actually thats incorrect. It just wont reflect a ‘fake’ specular. When I use real geometry lights, i frequently turn off all specular fake highlights in my vray material as I’m getting proper specular reflection with my geometry light. > > this is actually also incorrect 🙂 > > What david said is also incorrect, but allow me to explain: > The way vray treats specular and reflection is not a separate components. There is no separate reflection and specular. What vray does is treats these like direct and indirect reflection. Where direct reflection is a specular, and indirect reflection is a reflection of objects. Furthermore, the reflection and specular are mixed together to return correct result. One without the other is not an accurate result. > Mental ray arch material works the very same way. interesting, didn’t know that. But that doesn’t mesh with a project I did recently. I was matching a photograph, and I had this highlight on the floor that I couldnt get to match with the photograph. After unlinking the specular highlight and the glossy highlight and setting it to 1.0, the render looked very close to the photograph. Rather unscientific, but it sure worked for me. ---
**Author:** ![Morbid\_Angel](https://dub1.discourse-cdn.com/chaosprd/user_avatar/forums.chaos.com/morbid_angel/32/21272_2.png) [@Morbid\_Angel](https://forums.chaos.com/u/Morbid_Angel)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2007, 8:43pm UTC](https://forums.chaos.com/t/hiding-vraylight-from-reflection/15182/11 "2007-08-24T20:43:41Z")
the funny thing is, I dont know why specular is called specular. Because in real life there is no specular, thats a known fact. On wiki it says that specular is a perfect mirror like reflection. So its reflection, why did they call it specular, make everyone confused. What I do know for a fact, is that in 3d, and any self respecting renderer such as vray or mr, specular does have a true bit to it. If you have an area light such as reactangular, and you make the shader have only specular, no reflections, then make the specular very sharp, the shape of the specular will be reactangular, like your light. So, there is some form of raytracing thats going on even with spec. And to add more to this strangeness, maxwell has also component called specular. Why? if its physically inacurate… ---
**Author:** ![percydaman](https://dub1.discourse-cdn.com/chaosprd/user_avatar/forums.chaos.com/percydaman/32/42214_2.png) [@percydaman](https://forums.chaos.com/u/percydaman)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2007, 9:25pm UTC](https://forums.chaos.com/t/hiding-vraylight-from-reflection/15182/12 "2007-08-24T21:25:23Z")
i suspect the term ‘specular’ has been in the lexicon of 3d graphics too long. I do remember now that vlado said that just the specular highlight function he added ‘did’ have some form of accuracy now found in the purely fake max specular highlight, but I still think that when you reflect a geometry light and have both glossy reflection and glossy highlights turned on, it appears brighter then it should be. Like its getting double hit or something. Remember vlado only added that highlight after being bugged repeadetly to do so by vray users. And then only after some prodding. 😄 I still use it alot, just not when Im only using geometry lights. ---
**Author:** ![Morbid\_Angel](https://dub1.discourse-cdn.com/chaosprd/user_avatar/forums.chaos.com/morbid_angel/32/21272_2.png) [@Morbid\_Angel](https://forums.chaos.com/u/Morbid_Angel)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2007, 10:09pm UTC](https://forums.chaos.com/t/hiding-vraylight-from-reflection/15182/13 "2007-08-24T22:09:47Z")
actually this has been discussed. The simplest test is to take a light, mesure its white point value. Then compare that in a pure reflective material. With and without glossy highlite. ---
**Author:** ![percydaman](https://dub1.discourse-cdn.com/chaosprd/user_avatar/forums.chaos.com/percydaman/32/42214_2.png) [@percydaman](https://forums.chaos.com/u/percydaman)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2007, 11:58pm UTC](https://forums.chaos.com/t/hiding-vraylight-from-reflection/15182/14 "2007-08-24T23:58:32Z")
I did a simple test like you said. Its pretty obvious that the glossy/specular render is alot brighter then just glossy or just specular. Ill tell you what though. It doesn’t speak to vray’s physical accurateness if someone is forced to use both the specular highlight fake, along with the ‘supposed to be’ correct glossiness highlight, in order to get the correct value. ---
**Author:** ![mroranger](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/c68b51/32.png) [@mroranger](https://forums.chaos.com/u/mroranger)\ **Post date:** [August 28, 2007, 1:16am UTC](https://forums.chaos.com/t/hiding-vraylight-from-reflection/15182/15 "2007-08-28T01:16:59Z")
same problem Hi, Im solving now same problem. Have a scene with blurred reflection(using just reflection glossiness) on two parts, floor and some metal cylinders. Im using Vray lights+exterior skylightmat+some planes with vraylightmat for lighting interior. So If i render everything except floors looks to me correctly.Cylinders seems to have good blurred reflections, but floor have reflection+Vraylight affect specular “feature”…the big light colored reflection which look non-realistic. Now Im solving how to switch these Vraylight speculars off, but achieve the same reflections(nice, contrast’n’bright) on cylinders. I achieved it with vraylight speculur affect off and additional amout of exterior light(skylight+planes(with vraylight material)) which reflecting in cylinders and causing more contrast and bright reflections… But now have problem because this solution is working just with (color correction subpixel off+clamp off) and this causing dark/bright artifacts around bright areas(mainly light materials,highlights). Another solution crossed my mind… I cannot use Vray lights any more 😕 Have anyone better solution? Thanx ---
**Author:** ![percydaman](https://dub1.discourse-cdn.com/chaosprd/user_avatar/forums.chaos.com/percydaman/32/42214_2.png) [@percydaman](https://forums.chaos.com/u/percydaman)\ **Post date:** [August 28, 2007, 11:23am UTC](https://forums.chaos.com/t/hiding-vraylight-from-reflection/15182/16 "2007-08-28T11:23:44Z")
can you show an image to illustrate your problem? What kind of AA filter are you using? ---
**Author:** ![dlparisi](https://dub1.discourse-cdn.com/chaosprd/user_avatar/forums.chaos.com/dlparisi/32/14236_2.png) [@dlparisi](https://forums.chaos.com/u/dlparisi)\ **Post date:** [August 28, 2007, 1:24pm UTC](https://forums.chaos.com/t/hiding-vraylight-from-reflection/15182/17 "2007-08-28T13:24:30Z")
> [@percydaman](#): > > I did a simple test like you said. Its pretty obvious that the glossy/specular render is alot brighter then just glossy or just specular. > > Ill tell you what though. It doesn’t speak to vray’s physical accurateness if someone is forced to use both the specular highlight fake, along with the ‘supposed to be’ correct glossiness highlight, in order to get the correct value. I think I’ve figured out what’s happening here (apologies to Vlado 😅 ). It appears that checking or unchecking either “Affect Specular” and “Affect Reflection” causes vray to deviate from a physically correct world and is instead forced into separating out the specular and reflection, which as dimtri said, isn’t true to nature. For example, once you uncheck “affect specular” in the light, you can get the exact same image if you leave it on and take the reflective material and force a highlight of 1 (i.e., no highlight). Similarly, if you uncheck “Affect Reflection” in the light, you can get an identical render if you were to leave it on and uncheck “Trace reflections” in the material. I think the confusion comes from the nomenclature in the light controls since you can’t really separate the specular and reflective components of the light itself as these are material properties. I think we all already know that separating the highlight glossiness from the reflection glossiness in the vrayMtl is a no-no for physical accuracy (but necessary sometimes) so I think this explains why percy’s test resulted in a “inaccurate” result. ---
**Author:** ![vlado](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/779978/32.png) [@vlado](https://forums.chaos.com/u/vlado)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2007, 7:34am UTC](https://forums.chaos.com/t/hiding-vraylight-from-reflection/15182/18 "2007-08-29T07:34:19Z")
V-Ray only guarantees an accurate result when you calculate both speculars and reflections; turning either of these off, in the lights, or the materials, is not guaranteed to produce any particularly logical result - it will remove the specified component, but the values of the remaining one can vary depending on the light and the material. This is because, in the nature of the light calculations, V-Ray computes something that is “like” hilights, and something that is “like” reflections, which when added give you a correct result. Each of these is only a partial result though, and so is weaker than the total result. V-Ray does this, because some cases are better computed by reflections (e.g. mirror-like materials with large light sources), and some cases are better computed with hilights (e.g. glossy materials with small light sources) - so it makes sense to compute both and combine them in a way to produce the best (least noisy) result. Best regards, Vlado ---
**Author:** ![percydaman](https://dub1.discourse-cdn.com/chaosprd/user_avatar/forums.chaos.com/percydaman/32/42214_2.png) [@percydaman](https://forums.chaos.com/u/percydaman)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2007, 12:00pm UTC](https://forums.chaos.com/t/hiding-vraylight-from-reflection/15182/19 "2007-08-29T12:00:52Z")
hmmmm… I always thought that the highlight glossiness was there for the times you choose to use a vray material and a max point light. IMO the glossiness should be able to produce the correct reflection using ONLY the glossiness when using a geometry based light. And the highlight should be the fake those that use the point light need. Its seems unnecessarily convoluted otherwise. ---
**Author:** ![vlado](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/779978/32.png) [@vlado](https://forums.chaos.com/u/vlado)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2007, 12:28pm UTC](https://forums.chaos.com/t/hiding-vraylight-from-reflection/15182/20 "2007-08-29T12:28:13Z")
For objects with self-illuminated materials, reflections will give you the correct result (since V-Ray does not know how to directly trace them for hilights). For point lights, there is only a hilight component and it is the correct result (obviously, there is no reflection component, as the lights are immaterial). For VRayLight’s, there is both a reflection component, and a hilight comonent, which are added together. The ratio of these components depends on the light size and position relative to the material, as well as on the material glossiness. This is not just for the sake of confusing you - it greatly reduces the noise in the speculars. It may be interesting to observe also that diffuse illumination from VRayLight’s is also split between direct lighting, and the GI calculations, for the same reason - noise reduction (only when you use GI, of course). All in all, by default all this works correctly, so you don’t really have to think about it. Best regards, Vlado