Check out this tutorial on creating custom fresnel curves in Cycles for more accurate reflections and other shader enhancements.
mookie writes:
Adjusting fresnel curve may help you to control reflections, material colour or any other shading parameter according to the viewer's angle. It's a technique inspired by V-Ray Falloff map that is widely used in order to achieve very accurate, realistic shaders. Now, when I discovered how to easily recreate it in Blender, I decided to share my solution in this short tutorial.
12 Comments
Thank you for this tutorial.
This will be absolutely useful !
Duh what a logical step - why did I try to do this with camp nodes. Thank you so much for the tip. This visually is more useful!
Very useful, but just one note: Layer Weight FACING is the mathematically correct input for this approach, as long as FRESNEL is already a curved function. FACING is more linear black to white intensity, so it is ideal to be curved.
Finally what I've been waiting for.
Very nice and useful tutorial, thank you! I like to have everything look realistic in my renders, and this will be a nice step toward that direction.
Thank you for this nice tips!! Indeed very useful!
Well timed! I was just experimenting with the look of our product's plastic casing - this method will be very helpful. :-)
Thank you so much! This is what I was needing for AGES!
another good tip, thanks, gotta put that one in the book :)
Brilliant
Great tip!
I agree with Adriano Oliveira:
the better input for such a curve node is Layer Weight:Facing.
I tried to measure the values of this coefficent for various incidence angles (see the picture below). It seems to be = 1-cos([incidence angle]), so it is approximately linear for angles > 15degrees (for angles < 15 deg. the reflectivity curves are mostly constant, so it is not a serious obstacle)
The material in the wheelbarrow character, how does that read to everyone else? Terra-cotta perhaps?