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what is "fresnel reflections"?


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hey stu,

sorry if im missing something basic here, but what exactly is the purpose of the GI light? Is it just to make the render have more pretty lighting for the purpose of showing off the reflections other typical GI reasons.. Or is it actually something needed for the fresnel reflections and affecting it dramatically.

i went ahead and just got rid of it and the reflections seemed to stay intact just fine so I'm pretty sure it has nothing to do with them, but just wanted to check and make sure.

thanks for the example.

dave

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Like Jason said, it has no real affect on the fresnel reflection. Because the reflections are being raytraced in this case and there is a bright sphere representing the sky being introduced in the fresnel reflections, I thought I'd cast a general skylight onto the scene with the GI light for the sake of continuity.

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ya know, you should package that fresnel shader and put it in the exchange.. im sure people would appreciate that.

15529[/snapback]

That's a good idea, since people tend not to account for fresnel simply because it's not built into the reflection-related VOPs.

But I just took a look at the shader, and thought I'd mention (not for your benefit stu, since I'm sure you're aware of it) that weighing reflections by the complement of the EdgeFalloff VOP is not the same as using the fresnel function. Of course, that doesn't mean it's "incorrect", it's just not the same as a fresnel reflection -- although you may well choose to go this way for aesthetic reasons, since it's a gentler, more "spread out" version of the effect.

I'm guessing here, but I'd bet that the EdgeFalloff simply returns pow(dot(normalize(N),normalize(I),exp), where exp is the "Edge Falloff" parameter. This basically gives you a cosine curve.

Having said that, I agree with deecue, it's a very cool and useful shader just as it is. :)

Thanks for sharing stu!

Cheers!

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Hi Mario (your sss work is fantastic! :notworthy: ),

Yeah, I've been torn between the fresnel definition and a consistent falloff based on angle of incidence. I've always found that the linear approach seems to be easier to predict in regards to it's behaviour. The purists out there are going to cringe, but I often cheat it even more and give it a baseline "max" and "min" reflection contribution based on the viewing angle so that the user has absolute control and completely ignore the whole "index of refraction" issue. It's not physically accurate, but it's easier for someone to make the picture that they were expecting.

I'll add the "min" and "max" methodology when I get a chance.

stu

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  • 2 weeks later...

Here's the new version of the shader with the "Min" and "Max" values for the reflections. They are absolute values based on the viewing angle and will allow the user to determine exactly how much reflected colour is being contributed to surfaces at both the facing angles and the grazing angles.

fresnel.zip

The default "Min" is .1 and the default "Max" is 1. These are multiplied by the actual reflection colour value. The rate of decay is still controlled by the "Reflection Edge Falloff" value.

Let me know how it works for you.

stu

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  • 5 weeks later...
I was just fooling around with the shader posted above and blatently ripped off an image I posted here about two years ago:

post-237-1103329858.jpg

I'll post the new version of the shader as soon as I get a chance.

stu

15564[/snapback]

That's very nice, that's all I can and have to say about it, no criticism or whatsoever.

It's without doubt one of the most realistic renders I've ever seen, surely done with Houdini.

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  • 2 months later...

Here's a zipped file that contains everything that went into making the cube picture above (geometry, shaders, etc.):

cube.zip

I've turned some of the settings down so that it renders a bit faster but it's easy enough to turn them back up again. I've also given the ground surface a plain temporary shader, but the original (ground paper) is there as well. I threw the file together pretty quickly so it's probably not the cleanest setup in the world, and the "fake fresnel" shader could use some more options (optional affect spec contribution by "fake fresnel" angle, optional raytraced reflections, etc.). Feel free to make it better and tell me how you did it. :)

Questions, ask 'em.

stu

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