Canvas reflection question

rames44

So, I have a situation in which, for dramatic effect, I want the lighting on one character to look very different from the rest of the scene.  So, what I do is to render the base scene as-is, then create a second copy of the scene with the altered lighting and use a beauty canvas to render just the special character.  Render that to a PNG and then overlay the PNG on the base render in Photoshop.  Works like a charm.  (I use this technique because parts of the special character are frequently occluded, and the canvas/node list combination handles all that exactly the way I want.  Much easier then altering the character in post-work in Photoshop, because I'm a Photoshop neophyte.

Here's the question.  That works perfectly when the character is in the direct view of the camera, but it doesn't work if the scene has the character reflected in a mirror.  The character's reflection isn't visible.  (Insert appropriate vampire joke here.)  I'm assuming it's because the light rays from the mirror aren't "direct from character to canvas" rays, and so are getting filtered out.

How can I tweak the scene set up so that I can capture the character's reflection (and just that) in a beauty canvas? (or other type of canvas)

Richard Haseltine

You could try applying the Advanced Iray Node Properties script, from the /Scripts/Utilities/ folder, to a copy of the mirror with iray matte added in the script and enabled in parameters. Add that to your beauty pass and hide it in the regular render, I think it may work.