Mirror not refelctive when rendering?

heisdave

Hi, i am woring with an asset which is a room that contains a mirror on the wall. I would ike the mirror to reflect the items in the room when I render it. In 3DDelight renderer, it does to some degree. With Nvidia Iray the mirrow just looks dark. Does anyone know whart settings to adjust to get a mirror to reflect? Could it be realted to the amount iof light in the room, I notice that with the current lights that I added, the room is super bright in 3D delight, but pretty dark in iray...  Thanks

Linwelly

Best way is to find a mirror shader preset for Iray. Alternatively, if your mirror is an ojec not just a flat plane, you apply a glass shader preset to the whole and then select the backside and add a very smoth reflective metal shaderpreset to that. When it's not a separate surface you might need to use the geometry editor to make a new surface from that part of the mirror.

FenixPhoenix

heisdave said:

Hi, i am woring with an asset which is a room that contains a mirror on the wall. I would ike the mirror to reflect the items in the room when I render it. In 3DDelight renderer, it does to some degree. With Nvidia Iray the mirrow just looks dark. Does anyone know whart settings to adjust to get a mirror to reflect? Could it be realted to the amount iof light in the room, I notice that with the current lights that I added, the room is super bright in 3D delight, but pretty dark in iray...  Thanks

I use this shaders extensively on mirrors that don't have their materials set to Iray: http://www.sharecg.com/v/81125/favorite/21/DAZ-Studio/Iray-Mirror-Shader

FirstBastion

3Delight shaders will not work in Iray  because different render engines,  but it is a fairly quick adjustment.   This video shows the basics adjustment using the daz studio UBER shaders included with iray. 

prixat

Sounds like the lights will also have to be adjusted for Iray.

 

For testing in Iray the simplest mirror is just:
Metallicity - 100%
Diffuse Colour - Mid Grey

Szark

prixat said:

For testing in Iray the simplest mirror is just:
Metallicity - 100%
Diffuse Colour - Mid Grey

no I would opt for the shader that Gigi_FenixPhoenix posted http://www.sharecg.com/v/81125/favorite/21/DAZ-Studio/Iray-Mirror-Shader it s more realistic than prixat's idea.

heisdave

Thanks all, I installed that mirror shader from cgshare, then  i selected the surface of the mirrow, clicked the shader...  the mirror turned a shade of non-reflective light grey in the viewport... I rendered in Iray.. the mirror rendered in that same shade of gray in the render and was not reflective at all. Any idea what might be wrong?

BradCarsten

I usually drop the iray uber base on the material, and then turn up metallicity to full. If there is already a material applied, you can use Metal aluminium polished, which comes with Uber base (you can find these in my daz library > shader presets, iray uber,)

 

Linwelly

question one: what kind of lights do you use?

question two, is there something to reflect? like what rendersettings do you have, did you choose sun sky only? then you need to turn the dome on.

question three: from which angle do you look at your mirror, best thing is to place something close to your mirror and have the camera frontal (or nearly fromtal) to the mirror for the testing (once you worked it out that is not needed)

question three, go to your surface setting on the surface you turned into a mirror and check for the reflectivity there. it should be set to 100 % (the diffuse channel should be 0 or close to 0)

I hope this helps

Drip

heisdave said:

Thanks all, I installed that mirror shader from cgshare, then  i selected the surface of the mirrow, clicked the shader...  the mirror turned a shade of non-reflective light grey in the viewport... I rendered in Iray.. the mirror rendered in that same shade of gray in the render and was not reflective at all. Any idea what might be wrong?

Add the iRay Uber Base Shader first, then apply whatever iRay reflection shader you want to use. Directly applying iRay materials to a surface that was set up for a different type of renderer doesn't always work properly in my experience, but applying the iRay Uber Base always manages to set up such a surface properly (adding necessary attributes and all) for iRay, after which other iRay shaders apply as would be expected.