What is the new VRayFakeFresnel map all about?
It’s somewhat like the Falloff map in Fresnel mode, but uses Schlick’s approximation to the Fresnel term. Instead of working with an IOR, it just needs a front reflectance and grazing angle reflectance. It matches the BRDF curve used by the Arch&Design material.
Best regards,
Vlado
Hi Vlado,
Is there any chance to have VRayFakeFresnel in Maya? Looks like that there is no VRayFakeFresnel in V-Ray Plugin Texture yet.
Thank you as always.
Best Regards,
Sangho Jung
When it gets RT support in 3ds Max, it will be included also in Maya.
Great! Thank you for your reply! 
and the reason for using it over a falloff map would be speed or something workflow related?
Would be interesting to me, too. At the moment I do not see any use for it over a falloff map.
I’ve the impression it’s quite usefull to set easily the face reflection amount, and the border reflection amount, and then control the curve in between.
I think it could even be good to have it in the standard interface
yeah I suspected it being, as you wrote, to easily set the face and border reflection amount. A falloff map isn’t that hard either to set up, but let me understand the curve better. This curve value is not that obvious to me. But maybe it makes sense to some people and is good if you want to do things in a correct manner and enter data from some sort of measurement or chart?
Still curious if it’s faster than fallof, but too lazy/busy to set up a test.
Sorry for bringing up this old thread but is there info about this map anywhere? It’s been bugging me to find out what’s this map all about. I don’t see anything said about it and there’s neither description for it in the help page nor anywhere else on the internet.
I played with this map and it looks like Max’s Fallof map as others have mentioned. I would like to know when and why we should use it and what’s the difference to Falloff except for the way the user inputs the values that describe the fresnel effect. Maybe we should have this map explained in the help page so it’s clear how it is used and what we can accomplish with it.
Vlado, could you tell us why this Schick sampling is important? Does it give us any advantages to Falloff?
… or what about using this Complex Fresnel shader, if metals have to look really good?
… has anybody tried this approach? 
Best regards, Nils
If I am not wrong I think the GGX BRDF model is something like the complex fresnel shader.