A little help with mirror render please

[Iainy1961]

I am trying to create a plexiglass flat with a reflective surface. I have been battling this for hours and now I am confused as to what I have done. I have tried the various ways suggested on the forums but I have had no success. Any help would be greatly appreciated.  Right now I have used a smoked glass texture with a black background behind it. I just can't seem to make it mirror like. 

Thank you

 

[VIRTUALENVIRONS]

Are you trying to mirror text?

[Iainy1961]

@VIRTUALENVIRONS. No, the text is fine. I want the flat to be a mirror and have reflection.

[jmcewen]

Do you have anything in the drawing for it to reflect?  It may just be reflecting the void behind the camera.

 

There are also some mirror textures in the RW library I believe.  I am pretty sure there is a dark glass mirror, and I believe there is another that uses the obj attribute for color.  if not, it would be easy to edit the color of a resource to by switching to object attribute instead of the predefined color for the texture.

[Iainy1961]

@jmcewen  I have a light pointed straight at that flat, so you should be able to see that. I have tried so many many different textures I am a bit lost as to what I have done and not done. LOL I will look for the dark mirror but I think I tried that. Thank you

[Tom W.]

What render mode are you using?

[Dave Donley]

@Iainy1961 If you can attach the file here we can try different things.  Specular will show a halo of brightness from a light aimed at the surface even without anything to reflect.  Mirror won't show anything if there is only a void in the rest of the model.

[Dave Donley]

A studio HDR panorama can be used to make the reflections interesting, depending on render mode you can control whether this shows in the camera view or is only used for reflections.  In Renderworks modes you can control environment lighting, reflection, and/or seen by camera seperately.

Example (just googled not endorsing this site): https://polyhaven.com/hdris/studio 

 

Or, you can make a cyclorama textured object that is setup up behind the camera to provide something to reflect.

[Iainy1961]

@Dave Donley I sent the file to your message inbox

[jmcewen]

25 minutes ago, Tom W. said:

What render mode are you using?

and screen shot your render settings in that render mode.

 

Is this rendering in a design layer or in a sheet layer viewport?  

 

Also, flat and smooth usually doesn't sell a rendering even for things that are flat and smooth.  Imperfections are what sell a rendering.  Adding a bit of a displacement texture to the mirror surface will give it more opportunity to catch light in different ways.  A little ripple in the glass can do a lot for you.    It doesn't need to be much--not runny like glass in an old house-- just something to disrupt the plane a little bit and give your light and reflections something to play on.  These distortions also help reflections read as reflections instead of something seen through the glass.

Edited August 22 by jmcewen

[Kevin Allen]

2 hours ago, jmcewen said:

Do you have anything in the drawing for it to reflect?

that right there.

 

[VIRTUALENVIRONS]

I am assuming this is a work in progress.  Still, though, we have not really narrowed in to what you are trying to achieve.

 

I ran this up in CINEMA 4D.

 

 Is this "something" like what you want to do.

 

 

[Iainy1961]

@VIRTUALENVIRONS  Sorted it out. It was how I was rendering. I didn't realise that to achieve what I wanted it had to be done on the viewport side of things with custom render settings. Thank you for taking the time to help. 

[jmcewen]

2 hours ago, Iainy1961 said:

@VIRTUALENVIRONS  Sorted it out. It was how I was rendering. I didn't realise that to achieve what I wanted it had to be done on the viewport side of things with custom render settings. Thank you for taking the time to help. 

Those same settings can be used in the design layer-- just recognise that changing one group of settings does not change the other and vice versa.