Some options are available only in Advanced mode. Reflection – Enables reflection of the material. Reflection Color – Specifies the reflection color. For more information, please see the Reflection Color Parameter example below. Highlight Glossiness – Enables a separate glossiness control for the specular highlights of the material. Enabling this option and setting the value to 1.0 disables the specular highlights. Reflection Glossiness – Specifies the sharpness of reflections. A value of 1.0 means perfect mirror-like reflection; lower values produce blurry or glossy reflections. For more information, please see the Reflection Glossiness Parameter example below. Fresnel – When enabled, the reflection strength depends on the viewing angle of the surface. Some materials in nature (e.g. glass, etc.) reflect light in this manner. Note that the Fresnel effect depends on the index of refraction as well. For more information, please see the Fresnel Option example below. Reflection IOR – When disabled, the Refraction IOR is used as Reflection IOR. Enable for finer control over the Reflection IOR. BRDF – Determines the type of BRDF (the shape of the highlight). There are 4 types available - Phong, Blinn, Ward, Microfacet GTR (GGX). For more information, please see the BRDF Type example below. GGX is the most modern and flexible BRDF (Bidirectional reflectance distribution function) type and is able to better represent a broad range of materials thanks to its ability to control the shape of the specular lobe. There currently isn't any particular performance difference between models and there is little reason to choose any of the other types. Historically, the Phong, Blinn, Ward and GGX are successive reflectance models developed over the years in computer graphics where each model aimed to improve on the limitations of the previous ones. For example, the specular highlights with the Phong model have a very narrow and bright center with no falloff, but it doesn't work well with anisotropic reflections. The Blinn model has broader highlight center with a tight falloff. The Ward model has an even broader center and falloff. The GGX model has a bright center and an even longer falloff (at default settings). In the past, each model's characteristics resembled more closely a certain type of material, for example Phong could be used for plastics, Ward for cloth and metals, and Blinn for other common surfaces. However with the introduction of the GGX model, all of these surfaces can be approximated well, thus reducing the need for using the other models. It should be noted that no principled model is able to represent all possible materials entirely accurately, and where those models fail - for example when the material isn’t viewed frontally - only approaches such as that of VRscans are able to capture the correct material representation. |
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Back Side Reflect – When disabled, reflections are calculated for the front side of the objects only. When enabled back-side reflections are also calculated. Glossy Fresnel – When enabled, it uses glossy reflections and refractions. It takes the Fresnel equation into account for each microfacet of the glossy reflections, rather than just the angle between the viewing ray and the surface normal. The most apparent effect is less brightening of the grazing edges as the glossiness is decreased. With the regular Fresnel, objects that are less glossy may appear to be unnaturally bright and glowing at the edges. The Glossy Fresnel calculations make this effect more natural. Max depth – Specifies the number of times a ray can be reflected. Scenes with lots of reflective and refractive surfaces may require higher values to look right. GTR Tail Falloff – Active only when the BRDF is set to GGX. It allows fine tuning of the specular reflections by controlling the rate at which the sharp specular highlight fades out. Higher values create a value spread out the fade out of the highlight. This parameter does not affect the size of the actual highlight - this is controlled by the Reflect glossiness paramater. For more information, please see the GTR tail falloff example below. Affect Channels – Specify which channels are affected by the reflectivity of the material. Color Only – The reflectivity of the material affects only the RGB channel of the final render Color+Alpha – Causes the material to transmit the alpha of the reflected objects instead of displaying an opaque alpha. All Channels – The reflectivity of the material affects all channels and render elements. |