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Reflection Problem

Posted: Fri Dec 18, 2020 7:35 am
by mitchino
I'm lighting a brushed aluminium product. I have an hdri providing overall reflections and ambience, and area lights for extra highlights.

The anisotropic effect is created using a stretched noise image created in photoshop and used as a bump map.

I'm finding that the hdri lighting produces great results and picks out the details in the aluminium surface nicely.

However the reflections from the area lights look poor, they flatten out the aluminium surface and look comped on to the shot and unrealistic.

How can I fix this? Attached pic shows problem.

Re: Reflection Problem

Posted: Fri Dec 18, 2020 10:51 am
by mitchino
I have now lit the product using HDR Light Studio and no Octane area lights. This works great, I can see the anisotropic effect in the highlights. Still wondering why the Octane area lights obscure the detail in the bump map?

Re: Reflection Problem

Posted: Fri Dec 18, 2020 6:04 pm
by jayroth2020
What sampling level are your lights set to? Also, are you using Spectron with the area lights?

Re: Reflection Problem

Posted: Sat Dec 19, 2020 9:24 am
by mitchino
Sampling rate is 1 and using PT Kernel. Don't know how to use Spectron?

Re: Reflection Problem

Posted: Sat Dec 19, 2020 5:07 pm
by jayroth2020
Try a higher sampling rate. Start with 10 and see if that makes a difference.

For Spectron, look here: https://docs.otoy.com/cinema4d/Spectron.html

You can also try the AI light, as explained here: https://docs.otoy.com/cinema4d/AILight1.html

Re: Reflection Problem

Posted: Sun Dec 20, 2020 7:50 am
by mitchino
Thanks, will check those out.