3DL Mirror

Inkubo

3Delight doesn't compare favorably to Iray when a new user is just starting out because with Iray, you can get impressive results with less fooling around. So I've kinda pooh-poohed 3DL. But now I'm wondering if really good results are possible and I only need to get educated.

One thing that's trivial to do in Iray is make a mirror. It seems mirrors are also possible in 3DL, but it's totally not obvious how to do it. I searched and found some instructions here in the fora, but they don't seem to be complete enough, because no matter which shader I pick and how I fool with glossiness, specularity, or reflectivity (depending on what the shader offers), I can only get a vague reflection at best.

Can anyone tell me, step by step, how to make a mirror using one of the shaders DAZ provides by default?

sriesch

In the surfaces pane, set the reflection strength to a very high value.  Try 100, or back it down a little if you want the mirror to be less than perfect.

sriesch

    If the reflection in a mirror is jagged, this can be fixed by lowering the shading rate at the expense of render time (Render > Render Settings > Shading Rate).  In one example it was jagged at 1, but when changed to 0.1 it was better (A global setting I am doing in initial customization).

  Also, remember in a mirror what you are seeing is the reflection, so you want things around it to reflect.  Chrome won't look like chrome without a sky and ground or other surrounding objects.

  Screenshot shows two primitives, one with diffuse color set to red, the other with reflection set to 100, no other changes.

sriesch

Here's the same thing with a skydome and ground added.

Inkubo

Thank you, sriesch. You put me on the right trail! Part of my initial problem is that I was experimenting with a plane. When you create a plane and set its reflectivity to 100%, it's only vaguely reflective. (See Mirror.png).

However, it occurred to me to remove parameter limits and try again. Here are my results, attached as Mirror 2.png:

• The sphere has a Diffuse Color of white, Diffuse Strength 75%, and Reflection Strength 100%.
• To achieve a similar reflectivity on the plane, I had to set the Diffuse Color to white, Diffuse Strength to 50%, and Reflection Strength to 2000%. And I also had to add a tremendous amount of light to the scene.

So it looks like a mirror is doable, but if you want it to be flat, you have to fight with it in every scene.

The sphere has a haze on it that comes from the diffuse color. Turning the diffuse color to black doesn't turn it off; it just darkens the mirror. Is there a way to tell 3DL that you really do want a perfect mirror, and get it to ignore the diffuse color?

sriesch

I'm not sure about a perfect mirror.  You can just set the diffuse strength to 0 (along with the reflection at 100%).  That seems to work fairly well, although now that you point it out the mirror does seem slightly darker in one test render I did, but not by a lot.

I have not had to use a lot of light nor up the reflection past 100 to make it work.  Here's an example of a very dark scene where reflection seems to be working fine.  The right third of the mirror had the diffuse set to about 6%, the middle pane at 8%, and the left pane at 10% so there was a little glare in this example, but it all worked fine in dim lighting.

Here's the same thing with diffuse set to 0%:

sriesch

Here's another test, I don't know why the reflection is slightly different, but it's not really that significant.  Let me know how setting the diffuse 0%, reflection100% and all other parameters at default works for you in your test scene.

Inkubo

Your test scenes are gorgeous, BTW