VraySky Environment reflecting Spotty/Dotty on Floor surfaces??

[KBMT]

Hi,

 

I've been using this forum for years and years but this is going to be my first time asking for help, bear with me please!

 

Attached is my scene for an interior with a lot of lighting fixtures specified. VraySun and Sky were used outside to try and keep things simple.

 

I just can't get the balance of the floor material right, I'm a bit of novice with reflection maps/fall-offs etc. I'm trying to get some of the exterior light and/or sky to reflect to add a bit of depth to the image but I always seem to end up with either a completely flat material or very spotty reflections. The same happens when I try and add reflections on the timber stations.

 

Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

[KBMT]

The test image is fairly low resolution pre-photoshop: 1000 x 565 output size, using fixed image sampler, and a noise threshold of 0.005.

 

Attached are snapshots showing material settings. The larger shows the material map - slightly lighter/greyer - that I was trying to use in the reflection material slot before. A method I saw in a tutorial... somewhere. I'm quite basic with these things if you couldn't tell.

Edited March 14, 2014 by KBMT

[Ismael]

 

Edited March 14, 2014 by Ismael
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[Scott Schroeder]

For starters, you don't have a proper reflection falloff so your floor is acting like a single one-strength reflection value. Some like to use a perpendicular/parallel falloff map. Me, I prefer fresnel values. Everything has fresnel.

 

 

Secondly, your bump value is crazy high for a tile floor, especially since you are combining the grout bump with the tile surface bump. Partly this is why you are having spotty reflections. The tile surface looks like a moon surface with such a high bump number.

 

I would comp those two together as separate maps so you can keep your nice dark grout line bump and get a nice mid-to high-mid gray tile surface bump. Realistically, I'd model the floor to provide further separation between the grout and tile.

 

It's a personal peeve of mine to see negative values in bump slots, just make a proper bump map so you only have to stick with positive values.

[KBMT]

Thanks very much Scott. I'll set about trying those changes now. When you say to 'comp those two together as separate maps' do you mean to have a mixed map or that I should somehow merge my reflection map with the bump map?

[Scott Schroeder]

Check out the Vray comp texture. It allows you to comp together 2 images using a variety of blending functions.

[Crazy Homeless Guy]

I would start by finding a photo of the type of reflection you are trying to get from your floor. Any direction we can give you is subjective. Posting a photo of what you want to replicate will give us an objective way to approach the solution.

 

Off hand though I would say you need to start by increasing the intensity of your sky. If you are trying to create the look I envision that you are going after then I would say you need to crank the intensity of that sky up and/or increase the reflective-ness of the floor.

[KBMT]

[KBMT]

Hi Scott and Travis,

 

Thanks a lot for your input. I just inserted images in this box and subsequently deleted the entire text so here we go again... (images to follow)

 

Revisions:

- vraycomptex (A + B) with original map and greyer refl map

- 100% reflection fall-off: fresnel: black/white: viewing direction

- adjusted relf/high glossiness settings (see image)

- vraysun size multiplier decreased to sharpen doorframe shadows

 

Travis do you think I should increase the vraysky map in materials? It's currently on 1.0. I like the brightness now with the slight tint of blue, but would prefer the dispersion of the light to be more glow than grain. I'll attach an image of a lobby floor reflection that this should probably look more like, but with a rougher matte tile as opposed to shiny.

 

Cheers everyone!

[Tommy L]

If this will be rendered high res and you want very realistic tiles then you need to seperate the grout from the tile. You can either model the tiles or use some kind of blend in the material. You can use mix maps or a blend or a vray blend material.

I'd steer clear of relying on bump map to drive the 'feel' of the tile. Use the gloss/highlight gloss. If Im doing a marble or travertine floor I tend to use two highlights, almost like how you'd make a car paint. Youd have one grainy, wide highlight and one tight, polished one.

If you are looking for the bleached reflection youre seeing in the elevator lobby shot you posted you need to give your environment a higher value. Materials can only subtract value from the object they are reflecting, ie, the reflection will always be darker than the reflected object.

[KBMT]

 

Hey Guys, I just wanted to post a bit of an update. This is the image where it stands at the moment. I took off highlight glossiness completely and used fresnel values, while increasing subdivs for both the material and the sun. Still not entirely sure what I'm doing with fall-offs but it seems to be working out alright at the moment. Could probably up the brightness but that's likely more the vraysun and vraysky multipliers than the material at this point?

 

I never modelled the floor as individual tiles as I'd already sent a couple of other images with the floor in it - I didn't want it to detour too much from those in terms of quality.

 

Thanks very much for your input, good first experience!