Simple reflection

georglorenz

I have a crazy idea on how to maybe add simple reflectivity to a material. Unfortunately I am not a ruby expert at all, but maybe someone else would want to take on this little project. The script would do something like this:

Save the current viewpoint
Get a face from the user selection
set the viewpoint in the center of the face, looking at the reflected angle to the original view
render this view
apply the rendering as the material to the selected face
return to the original viewpoint

I guess it will never be photo-realistic but maybe the effect is interesting.

What do you think? G

Al Hart

This idea would work.

Another idea one our our clients used to get a reflective floor was to mirror all the geometry through the floor, and make the floor itself partially transparent.

thomthom

@al hart said:

Another idea one our our clients used to get a reflective floor was to mirror all the geometry through the floor, and make the floor itself partially transparent.

Isn't there a tutorial on this site that demonstrates this to create reflection for a lake?

simon le bon

@thomthom said:

Isn't there a tutorial on this site that demonstrates this to create reflection for a lake?

I remember it myself but can't find it again.

Mirror or Reflection.

Simulating a Reflection in Google SketchUp by Eric Lay(boofredlay)

A time for reflection by Tyson Kartchner

simon

georglorenz

@al hart said:

This idea would work.

Another idea one our our clients used to get a reflective floor was to mirror all the geometry through the floor, and make the floor itself partially transparent.

That's right! A mirror is a projection of the object through the plane of the reflecting surface! That could work with any surface not just the floor is what you are saying. Very clever. So the script could also

mirror the complete geometry of the model around the selected face
make a section cut through the plane of the selected face
saving the resulting image
projecting it on the selected face
and then undo the translations.

Now that sounds like an evening program for the next half year. Thank you for your answers. G

TIG

When making reflexions this way by 'mirroring', it's a wise idea to make the relevant parts of the main model and the 'handed/flipped 'reflection' using the same component [i.e. make a component of the main parts then copy it and flip etc to mimic the reflected objects] - that way when you change something in the room's component entities it'll also change in the "reflection's" entities too...

Flatchoum

I tryed this way of creating a reflective floor, the problem is when you render the scene with shadows, they go straight in the ground and don't change their direction as symetrically as they 'd do in real life (on a reflective face); I mean the shadows have the same slope in the whole scene, including the "reflection". But this is only a detail...