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Mirrored sphere in 3DL?

Silent WinterSilent Winter Posts: 3,721
edited December 2017 in Technical Help (nuts n bolts)

So I made a prop set of Chinese health balls and case.  I did mats in iray, then decided "why not support 3DL too"?

Problem is, I can't get the proper metal effect on the balls.  I used to know my way around 3DL a lot better but this isn't working for me.

Attached is a comparison - the 3DL image also has a mirror prop from Daz - that looks great, so I tried copying the settings (no mats involved - right ball only has a bump map) - but the balls come out much darker.

I've got Diffuse at 0% (also tried other settings), Reflection at 100% (also tried 80%), and specular strength at 0% (also tried 50% and 100%).  I also have a 360 degree skydome, lit with ambient at 100%.

I seem to recall I've had this problem in the past with curved mirrors in 3DL.

Any help appreciated.

Chinese Health Balls Iray 3DL.jpg
2000 x 1000 - 889K
Post edited by Silent Winter on

Comments

  • Richard HaseltineRichard Haseltine Posts: 100,781

    What is the Reflection Colour?

  • Sven DullahSven Dullah Posts: 7,621
    edited December 2017

    Diffuse color  pure white, diffuse strenght 0%, reflection color pure white, reflection strength 100% should be what you're looking for. That's with the DS default shader. Lightning model metallic and specular strength 100%, glossiness maybe 90% and spec. color maybe 200,200,200.

    This is of course a 100% reflective object that couldn't exist in the real world, so use as a starting point;)

    Post edited by Sven Dullah on
  • Silent WinterSilent Winter Posts: 3,721
    edited December 2017
    Richard Haseltine said:

    What is the Reflection Colour?

    Pure white.

    Sven Dullah said:

    Diffuse color  pure white, diffuse strenght 0%, reflection color pure white, reflection strength 100% should be what you're looking for. That's with the DS default shader. Lightning model metallic and specular strength 100%, glossiness maybe 90% and spec. color maybe 200,200,200.

    This is of course a 100% reflective object that couldn't exist in the real world, so use as a starting point;)

    That's what I figured I'd start with and tone down from there - but I'm just getting the dark colours.  As a comparison, I tried a DS default primitive sphere out of the box and adjusted the settings to those you mentioned and got the same result.

    Raytrace depth is set at 4 but increasing it to 8 made no difference.

    The mirror in the image has the same settings and works just fine so I'm not sure what the difference is with the spheres.  (Adjusting the camera, the mirror also reflects the darker spheres as darker and it reflects the skydome perfectly).

    Post edited by Silent Winter on
  • DaWaterRatDaWaterRat Posts: 2,885

    They are reflecting, they're just not silvery shiny... try increasing the diffuse strength/tweaking the diffuse color.  I just tried one of the Gemologica presets, and that has the diffuse at 100% strength (in a medium taupe for this case)

  • Sven DullahSven Dullah Posts: 7,621
    edited December 2017

    Quick test scene:

    image

    MIRRORED SPHERE.png
    1280 x 720 - 2M
    Post edited by Sven Dullah on
  • Sven DullahSven Dullah Posts: 7,621
    edited December 2017
    Sven Dullah said:

    Quick test scene:

     

    What's your light setup? I used an AoA spot centered at the sphere and some AoA amb light.

    Raytrace depth 2, everything else is overkill.

    Post edited by Sven Dullah on
  • Sven DullahSven Dullah Posts: 7,621
    Silent Winter said:
     

    The mirror in the image has the same settings and works just fine so I'm not sure what the difference is with the spheres.  (Adjusting the camera, the mirror also reflects the darker spheres as darker and it reflects the skydome perfectly).

    Well this is a bit odd. As for my test scene I used a DS primitive but pretty high density mesh, don't know if that would make a difference, don't think it should. The material was pretty close to what I suggested, diff strength at 3%, reflection strength 97%

  • Silent WinterSilent Winter Posts: 3,721
    Sven Dullah said:
    Silent Winter said:
     

    The mirror in the image has the same settings and works just fine so I'm not sure what the difference is with the spheres.  (Adjusting the camera, the mirror also reflects the darker spheres as darker and it reflects the skydome perfectly).

    Well this is a bit odd. As for my test scene I used a DS primitive but pretty high density mesh, don't know if that would make a difference, don't think it should. The material was pretty close to what I suggested, diff strength at 3%, reflection strength 97%

    That test scene looks like a perfect place to start.   Really not sure why I'm not getting it.  I'm using the latest DS (4.10.0.123), 64-bit.

    I'm just using 3 distance lights (skydome set to not cast shadows) - Tried adding a spotlight too.

    Thanks for trying to help, I'll keep experimenting.

  • GoneGone Posts: 833

    Do you have an environment for the spheres to reflect? Without an environment you only get black reflected.

    The mirror is reflecting the box and table but without a sky, room, or something surrounding the scene the spheres have nothing to reflect.

    If I recall correctly, iRay automatically creates the sky dome - 3dl does not.

  • Sven DullahSven Dullah Posts: 7,621
    Gone said:

    Do you have an environment for the spheres to reflect? Without an environment you only get black reflected.

    The mirror is reflecting the box and table but without a sky, room, or something surrounding the scene the spheres have nothing to reflect.

    If I recall correctly, iRay automatically creates the sky dome - 3dl does not.

    He has a 3DL skydome, if you look at the mirror edges you can see the reflections.

  • Silent WinterSilent Winter Posts: 3,721
    edited December 2017
    Gone said:

    Do you have an environment for the spheres to reflect? Without an environment you only get black reflected.

    The mirror is reflecting the box and table but without a sky, room, or something surrounding the scene the spheres have nothing to reflect.

    If I recall correctly, iRay automatically creates the sky dome - 3dl does not.

    Thanks, but yeah - I'm using a 360 skydome - if I move the camera, the skydome reflects just fine in the mirror, just not the balls.  Edit: or rather it does reflect in the balls, but the balls don't look metallic, just dark.

    Post edited by Silent Winter on
  • Silent WinterSilent Winter Posts: 3,721
    edited December 2017

    Update - playing with it just now - flipping the normals with the geometry editor has led to progress (weird, as a default DS sphere primitive was also misbehaving).

    This is an improvement at least - I think remaining darkness here is actual reflection.

    Chinese Health Balls 3DL.jpg
    800 x 800 - 273K
    Post edited by Silent Winter on
  • Sven DullahSven Dullah Posts: 7,621

    I can't say I know what's going on lol but you can always try limits off on the reflection strength and crank it up to 250% or something.

  • Silent WinterSilent Winter Posts: 3,721

    Turns out it was mostly the lighting model - setting it to metallic gave dark results but setting it to glossy-plastic made it more shiny.

    Kyoto Kid's settings in this thread https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/comment/3161441/#Comment_3161441 did the trick.

    Thanks for getting me most of the way there :)

  • Sven DullahSven Dullah Posts: 7,621

     

    Silent Winter said:

    Turns out it was mostly the lighting model - setting it to metallic gave dark results but setting it to glossy-plastic made it more shiny.

    Kyoto Kid's settings in this thread https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/comment/3161441/#Comment_3161441 did the trick.

    Thanks for getting me most of the way there :)

    Glad you got it solved! Funny though that the metal lightning model worked for me. I rendered in progressive mode, have to see if that makes any difference;)

  • Silent WinterSilent Winter Posts: 3,721
    Sven Dullah said:

     

    Silent Winter said:

    Turns out it was mostly the lighting model - setting it to metallic gave dark results but setting it to glossy-plastic made it more shiny.

    Kyoto Kid's settings in this thread https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/comment/3161441/#Comment_3161441 did the trick.

    Thanks for getting me most of the way there :)

    Glad you got it solved! Funny though that the metal lightning model worked for me. I rendered in progressive mode, have to see if that makes any difference;)

    While it shouldn't, I'll give it a try (working today though so maybe tomorrow).  It might be due to the different light setup.  Lighting makes a big difference with these  things, but I tried different light setups.  Oh well, at least it seems to be working now :)

  • Sven DullahSven Dullah Posts: 7,621
    edited December 2017
    Silent Winter said:
    Sven Dullah said:

     

    Silent Winter said:

    Turns out it was mostly the lighting model - setting it to metallic gave dark results but setting it to glossy-plastic made it more shiny.

    Kyoto Kid's settings in this thread https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/comment/3161441/#Comment_3161441 did the trick.

    Thanks for getting me most of the way there :)

    Glad you got it solved! Funny though that the metal lightning model worked for me. I rendered in progressive mode, have to see if that makes any difference;)

    While it shouldn't, I'll give it a try (working today though so maybe tomorrow).  It might be due to the different light setup.  Lighting makes a big difference with these  things, but I tried different light setups.  Oh well, at least it seems to be working now :)

    I know it doesn't matter anymore but still puzzled by the different results. So did some more testing. Progressive off made no difference. Made a new simple scene with only a primitive sphere, a plane and a distant light with raytraced shadows and tested all the lightning models except matte. This is what I get:

    Plastic:

    image

    Glossy Plastic:

    image

    Metallic:

     

    image

    Glossy metallic:

    image

    As far as I can see the only difference is the specular model, and it seems like metallic and plastic are identical, same with glossy metallic and glossy plastic.

    Tried same scene with only camera headlight and got the same results. Go figuresurprise

     

    plastic distant light.png
    1280 x 720 - 681K
    glossy plastic distant light.png
    1280 x 720 - 680K
    metallic distant light.png
    1280 x 720 - 681K
    glossy metallic distant light.png
    1280 x 720 - 680K
    Post edited by Sven Dullah on
  • DaWaterRatDaWaterRat Posts: 2,885

    You have a skydome in that scene.  Maybe on Uber Environment?  3DL doesn't have a default environment.

  • Sven DullahSven Dullah Posts: 7,621
    edited December 2017
    DaWaterRat said:

    You have a skydome in that scene.  Maybe on Uber Environment?  3DL doesn't have a default environment.

    Yes I have a 3DL skydome, a plane, a sphere and a distant light, no UE2 or anything else. In the first test (see above) I used AoA amb+ AoA spot. Same result with the metallic lightning model. Point being none of those turned dark as for Silent Winter.

    Post edited by Sven Dullah on
  • Silent WinterSilent Winter Posts: 3,721
    edited December 2017

    I'm still messing - apparently the zip I uploaded had a problem with 'Ball 2' anyway.

    Gone, in this post: https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/comment/3164626/#Comment_3164626

    suggested my IOR was wrong - and indeed setting it to zero instead of the default makes everything much shinier (but still not with the metallic lighting model).

     

    Edit: Okay - fixed the issue with the missing uv-set, tweaked the 3DL settings and uploaded a new zip.

    Post edited by Silent Winter on
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