Mirror Reflect
wompdonkey
Posts: 19
Hi. I purchased a dance studio from the Daz Store and I'm using it for a scene I'm building. There are 3 mirrors in the scene that are side by side. I am sometimes getting the expected/desired effect from the mirrors and sometimes not. I stopped this render short, and perhaps that's the issue, but experience with this scene tells me that it would have fully rendered like this. You can actually see, in the bottom right corner of the picture where the mirror has rendered appropriately on the left mirror and the right mirror has begun to render as if there were a white film over it like the top half of the left mirror.
I've also uploaded a fully rendered scene using the same settings and angle.
Anyone got a suggestion on how to solve this issue?
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Comments
Which dance studio is this? Does it have Iray materials (assuming you are rendering with Iray)?
Correct (Iray)
This is the Dance Class Studio.
I doubled the size of the studio, added some light tubes and put the mirrors on the other side of the room. Perhaps that has something to do with it? I'm still pretty new at this.
https://www.daz3d.com/dance-studio doesn't have iRay materials.
I've only been doing this for a couple of months. I think what you're saying is that I can't render this using Iray because it lacks the correct materials?
?
You can, and DS will try to convert the materials to Iray on the fly, but one of the materials that usually fails is mirrors.
You need to apply Iray Mirror material to the mirrors to get them working properly. I don't remember if any came with DS, but there are good ones available for free.
The one I use the most is from Tom2099, https://sharecg.com/v/81213/related/7/Material-and-Shader/DAZ-Iray-car-related-shader-presets-megapack
wompdonkey said:
I've only been doing this for a couple of months. I think what you're saying is that I can't render this using Iray because it lacks the correct materials?
Yes, it isn't difficult to change the materials (the program did a crude autochange for your render). Truthfully, I would probably just apply an iRay mirror shader to the mirrors, re-render and you are done. For example, if you select the studio, select the mirrors, apply the default iRay shader and the a free shader like this (https://www.sharecg.com/v/81125/browse/21/DAZ-Studio/Iray-Mirror-Shader), you are done.
Thank you so much!!
Thank you!!
If you select the mirror in the scene tab, and then selct the surfaces in the surface tab, you can then apply Iray Uber Base shader, and after that the Metal Silver shader. Both these should be part of the default ressources. That should give a reflective surface.
Edit to add: After applying the Metal Silver, you should change Base Color to pure white, and set Glossy Roughness to 0.
You certainly want to pickup a iray mirror shader to apply to the surface. But you should also hide or remove the mirror that is not seen on the other side of the room. It will only add to your render time calculations and light ray bounces.
Silver is exactly what I used. The glossy roughness and base color made it work better. Thank you!
Does this happen even if that mirror is not in the viewport? This scene takes a really long time to render. Thinking that might be one of the culprits?
Just wanted to say thank you for all of the help and fast responses.
For those of you who shared the sharecg links, thank you. Unfortunately, new account registrations are closed. Anyone know why or if this is something you can get around?
Everything in the scene that isn't hidden (with the eye-icon) increases the VRAM load and rendering time, does not matter if it isn't visible on the camera.
Tom2099's DeviantArt page; https://www.deviantart.com/tom2099/art/Iray-car-related-shader-presets-megapack-539622361
That seems to have fixed it! Thanks everyone!
You can use the Surface Selection tool to select both the object and the surface in one click. Though as far as I know the Silver shader that comes with Daz Studio is a full shader and doesn't need Iray Uber Base aplied first
Iray has not been in Daz Studio from the beginning, content that predates the addition (early 20,000s in the SKU) will say they have Daz Studio materials meaning 3Delight, not Iray.
Gotcha! Thanks for the clarification. I thought that maybe I was missing a punchline. :D
Daz should include a number of shaders with it as well. They may be buried in a different folder depending on your installation.
Mirrors are computationally expensive, so they can take longer than if the room had no mirrors. Having a mirror on the opposite wall will especially blow up render times, because with 2 mirrors facing each other they can potentially reflect infinitely into each other...which can jack your render times to infinity as well.
Everything in your scene is loaded in 3D, whether it is in view of the camera or not. If you have a person out of the camera view, they can still cast a shadow into camera view. Everything is still computed. Hiding stuff out of view that doesn't impact the scene can help save time and GPU memory.
Another possibility is that your scene exceeds your GPU VRAM and drops to CPU render mode. That will certainly blow up render times.