Fake reflection

[Jeremias_Garritano]

hi, i need to create this unrealistic non physical reflection.. like ramp controlled reflection.. is this possible in Arnold?

[aicazaL3HPB]

Hi, Ijust think the Autodesk's genius aren´t thinking  on they users, they don´t care, they just wan money so I think we have to wait until some other create a plugin or something

[lee_griggs]

You can connect a ramp_float -> standard_surface.specular_roughness to control the reflection of the cube.

[aicazaL3HPB]

hi,sadly Im using 3d max 2024 and your solution does not work for us, I afraid we choose the wrong horse to do our work, maybe Blender can do a beter job.

[lee_griggs]

Here is a similar setup in MAXtoA. Let me know if you need the scene file.

[aicazaL3HPB]

thanks a lot Lee, let me tell you that the file is on my home and now Im at work so Ican´t show you the final image but the cuestion is that the ramp_float efectibly show the reflected image over the surface of my object, but it shows blak and white and it looks pixelated, I do´t know why but the image looks very, very bad, how ever Im doing proves whith the physical material, when you expand it to a classic advanced it shows a clearcoat map and it kaid of work, you can see the reflection image at full color the only think is that the UVW sistem is attached to the object, so the environ has to be Environ and the mapping sistem has to set at Spherical Environment, let me do a imagen to show you how it looks

[CiroCardoso3v]

Any chance you can share the original file? You probably need to Unwrapp the surface that is reflecting the main object.

[aicazaL3HPB]

Hi, the file is just an sphere with a physics material expanded to a "classic advanced" and it has just a Clearcoat map, nothing else, I just made an sphere and aply the material, nothing special

[aicazaL3HPB]

Hi, I made a new file with the reflection efect aplied to a clearcoat layer, the reflection now is not atached to the object but looks so unnatural, I supose is the best that 3d max 2024 can do.

[CiroCardoso3v]

OK, I think we are talking about two different things. All you sent me was a scene with a sphere reflecting a gray environment. There are no lights here. How do you expect to look it "natural"?

What exactly are you trying to achieve?

[aicazaL3HPB]

Hi, thanks for replying, let me explain, I usually have to make renders of objects that are covered by different materials, sometimes they have graphics and are reflective, others are metallic, most of the time they have transparent parts and others are matte, these objects are decorative labels, and the combination of materials is practically infinite, sometimes they can be 2 materials and others up to 6 different materials, most of the time these renders have to be very fast, with the previous versions of 3D studio, I used mental ray and as materials I used the blend, and in the metallic parts I could place a texture to make the metallic parts more attractive, and these behaved as a reflection, without complications, now with Arnold the metallic parts look like metals, but the clients want to see more attractive the shines, but they do not do that, I know that the idea is to be realistic, but I think that Autodesk forgets that the clients have their own ideas of what they want, not all of them want to be realistic, but I think that they do know what they want, They want their products to shine and in previous versions you could make the metallics look brighter and more luminous by placing an image as a reflection map, however with the Arnold apparently you can't, the standard materials do let you, but in the version of 3D Max 2024 that I have, they don't work with arnold, so I'm not sure I can do that.

[aicazaL3HPB]

I just want to place an image in the reflections and for them to behave like reflections, with MentalRay I could do it, why can't it be done in Arnold? In Mental Ray I could use a chrome sphere as ambient light that allowed real reflections and also add an image to be reflected, why can't I make my reflections more attractive and beautiful with Arnold?

[lee_griggs]

You can adjust these things to get something that is less 'physical' and more 'artistic' in standard_surface.advanced. Such as indirect_diffuse and indirect_specular.

You can also use specular_anisotropy to affect the shape of the highlight. Examples are at the bottom here.

The ray_switch shader allows you to use different shaders for camera, diffuse, specular, and transmission rays.

You can also use the Arnold math shaders to control how the shading looks. Examples here.

The utility shader also has various color modes that can be used to control shading.

[aicazaL3HPB]

I have send you  this example, it shows a plastic film, it has the kind of reflection Im looking for, It don´t not have to be realistic, it just has to be nice for the clients, the thing is, that Arnold takes a lot of time, some time we don´t have to much time for rendering by parts, using mental Ray Iwas able to do my materials looks good with not a lot of time render. Why does Autodesk leave us without options or with complex ways to do what could previously be done just by applying a map? It is very unfair.

[CiroCardoso3v]

The suggestions from Lee are what you need. The Ray Switch is what allows you to replace one reflection with another for example. The problem is that you went from a non-PBR workflow with Mental Ray to a PBR workflow with Arnold (actually almost every render engine now is PBR) which will make "faking" very hard. Regarding the rendering times, you would need to share a scene that is taking too long but usually is related to not using correctly the samples.

[aicazaL3HPB]

First of all I want to thank you all for trying to help me, I really appreciate all your advice and I understand that the trend is the use of these materials, not only by Autodesk, if not all in general, what you mention of Ray switch is interesting and I will investigate more about it because I have no idea how to apply it, as for the delay of the renders by the setings, I'm doing tests, The problem I have is that before coming to this forum I searched the net for some tutorials and information and everything is the same, all talk about transparent materials, metallic, but none shows what I'm needing, I will try to create a scene as you ask me to send them, because by privacy policies I can not send anything that affects my company, they are very strict about it.

[aicazaL3HPB]

The problem with the network is that there is a lot of information about Ray Switch, but for Maya, Vray, Corona, but so far I have not been able to find something that explains how to apply it in 3D Max, I watched a tutorial in which they used Maya, but the truth is that I did not achieve the same results, and for 3D Max I can only find texts that say what it is for.but not how to use it and for someone who is trying to understand the immense amount of materials that the Max brings it is very difficult, really, everything focuses on Maya and Vray.

[aicazaL3HPB]

I send you an image where I show you the type of help that I find in 3D Max, it doesn't tell me anything, only what it is used for, but nothing else, then I try to apply it, but since it doesn't show anything, I apply it to all the fields, and Nothing happens, and finally the result where it only shows an opaque circle, and I can't make it show not only the reflection, but any color, is frustrating.

[lee_griggs]

Here is the Arnold page for the rayswitch shader.

https://help.autodesk.com/view/ARNOL/ENU/?guid=arnold_user_guide_ac_surface_shaders_ac_ray_switch_ht...

[aicazaL3HPB]

In this example, I connect my material field to the Ray Switch camera and it shows the image I want, but when I rotate the object, the image moves, it does not act as a reflection, try changing the projection type from texture to amviron, screen to shing wrap environment, and it gives me the same results that I had already shown you, but in this case, as I mentioned, the texture rotates with the object, where do I use the Ray Switch so that the reflections of my object show Also the image that I want to be seen in the reflection?

Sorry for the insistence, but I think there must be a way to do it, if Arnold is better than Mental Ray, then it must be possible to do the same thing as before, after all it is the best there is, right?