Realtime Reflections
This videotutorial was published about a year ago, but as I came across it I thought it was worth sharing.
Max Hammond writes:In this tutorial I’m using a female deer “doe” as the object thats is going to become reflective. This technique can be used on any object although smooth objects without large flat planer faces work best, such as cars and organic curved shapes.
In a note about the use of the technique, the reflections generated only reflect the contains of the lightprobe map. If there is an object in the scene that you would like to be in the reflection you should either add it to the map or use the map as a backgroud for a traditional raytraced reflection.
Link
That’s good for checking geometry continuity while modeling e.g. car body
Thanks for sharing..
Thats a great tip! Its the way (partially) ZBrush works with materials. Is great for other effects too.
I just loaded up Blender Nation and I was like, That looks familiar!
Awsome to see my work posted here, Its good to know that my stuff is actualy being used. Although reading my qoute I wish I had spell checked it first :P.
I used the same technique to reduce the render times of this shot, <60 seconds a frame: http://vimeo.com/31409160
This is “called” MatCap, and you can find more info here:
http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?174790-ZBrush-matcap-in-Blender
You can download a lot of these “finished materials” and load them in to Blender using the technic described in the video above.
MatCap Library from PixoLogic:
http://www.pixologic.com/zbrush/downloadcenter/library/
You can also use environment mapping, which in Blender also allows for
reflecting other objects using (what seems to be, at a glance) a similar
technique.
is there a tut on these environnment map to compare it ?
also i got vista 32 bits with a small GPU and got some faces missing in viewport
but render seem ok is this problem with vista or bug in softl
now what would be the advantages of using this
i mean it’s nice to see lot’s of reflections but
there are no colors or textures on the model only on ereflection map!
so how can this be usefull ?
thanks
uhm, that’s just envmapping, nothing realtime.
Be sure to also check out his light paint idea!
For Animation and depending on Camera’s angle, choosing Mapping>>Coordinates>>>Normal ( instead of Reflections ) gives also interesting surfaces depending on model. Specially if you create your own images ! ( Set an Sphere, assign a color, a texture you like, render it RGBA without the sky. Save it as PGN. Then use this shot as your own image for texture. This gives endless alternatives for your materials without using Mirror Raytracing or Enviroment maps, speeding up render times. This is basically how Zbrush creates matcap materials. There is even a FREE program out there to create your own matcap materials, here is the link from Zbrush Central Forums:
http://www.zbrushcentral.com/showthread.php?92157-MaCrea-Material-Creation-Tool/page5