Hi all,

I am using the v15 beta.

I have ground plane that I want to be a little reflective. I made the reflectivity of the surface to 10% and thought that was too much so I lowered it to 7% but there was no difference. Then I lowered it to 1% and there was also no change.

I set the value to 0% and the reflection disappeared (which makes sense). Then I put in 0.1% and there was still no reflection. I incremented the value by 0.1% until I reached 0.5% and still no reflection. As soon as I went above 0.5% (such as 0.51%), the reflectivity reappeared at the same level of 10%.

Does anyone think that this problem is a bug in the new beta? should I write a report about it, or am I doing something wrong?

Joe

Is Reflectivity turned ON in your render options?

Try setting your specular size to 0% on that surface and see if it makes a difference.

Is it the default ground plane? I forget what it is (something simple) but your best bet is to remove it from the chor and model one of your own.

Hi all,

I plan to do more serious testing as why 1% was looking the same as 10% and will post my results (I am using Ambiance Occlusion, Global Illumination, and one key light that is a Sun light). By the way Yves, the 0% specular did not seem to help.

Incidently, the Plug-in Shaders are turned off in the render options. This is correct when rendering with Global Illumination, Correct?

In the meantime, I pumped up the Reflection Blending to 100% (which seriously dimmed the brightness of the reflection). I also added Reflection Falloff of 100cm. Both of these plus the 1% reflectivity on the ground plane (which, by the way,is not the default ground plane) looks pleasing enough to me, so I am going to go with that and work on other things within the scene.

I will try to revisit this later.

Joe.

I tested with 14c and had similar results.
All render options set off sept for reflectivity.
Up to .5 nothing then suddenly on, but from .5 to 10 I do see a slight subtle increase in reflectivity.

Here is a mov of it.
Click to view attachment
Uses new model for ground instead of default.
This test has specular size to 100%
(but as animas3D reported setting specular size to 0% did nothing for it.)
0 to 1 seconds
0% to 1% reflectivity
1 to 2 seconds
1% to 5% reflectivity
2 to 3 seconds
5% to 10% reflectivity
3 to 4 seconds
10% to 20% reflectivity
4 to 5 seconds
20% to 100% reflectivity
And project file so you can see if I didn't set anything weird and so you can test without having to make a plane and sphere and set stuff.
Click to view attachment
Thanks for listing your workaround for if others have to deal with this and unless someone has a clear reason why reflection is acting this way I believe you should send a report.

If that was the case for him then he wouldn't have had any reflection ever appear.
I wish others here would test before assuming it was user error.
Maybe if this was the newbies forum or his description was lacking but he was giving specific numbers.

Thanks for confirming Sum Square Stories,

For some reason, I had difficulty viewing your Quicktime movie. It bombed out on two different machines after a few frames (what codec are you using?). Has this happened with others, or is it just me.

I'll try to submit a report when I get a chance. Thanks for your thorough research.



No problem, glad to help. By the way, try not to be so hard on Ken, he is a very helpful and informative presence on this great forum. Thanks Ken. And thanks to Yves for your suggestion, hopefully we can nail this down at some point.

Joe.

H.264
I usually render AVI's in Xvid but thought I read .MOV's were prefered here and H.264 compress really small. This is the first time I uploaded a movie to these forums. It played fine on my machines but ???
Were you able to get it to play or should I reload it with another codec?

Hmm. Maybe I need to get the latest version of Quicktime. I have 7.3. I think there is an update.

I actually always use the animation codec when posting here, although I know that gives larger file sizes. If you could post with the animation codec, cool. If not, I'll try to update quicktime as soon as I can. Thanks. Would love to see your test.

J.

Here is a quick test I did v14c. Linear reflection from 0% to 100% with frames 0-5 at 0% and frames 75-80 at 100%. My render settings:

Final
Multi-Pass 5
Motion Blur OFF
Depth of Field OFF
Shadows ON
Ambiance Occlusion 30%
Reflections Level 2 Soft OFF
Hair OFF
Subsurface Scattering ON
the rest are OFF

Compressions: Sorensen 3

Uh Oh, Quicktime crashing me again. I wonder why? I am even on a different machine that I just reinstalled the OS...

What Quicktime are you using?

Joe.

The problem might be that you need an earlier QT - I use 7.1.6 - Which also has some problems on some sites (particularly 11 sec club with firefox - in which I use 7.2? on another computer) 7.1.6 works better than the latest versions of QT for me in general most of the time. XP pro

Hmmm. No problems with Quicktime so far...

I'll have to look into this.

quicktime 7.2
animation codec
Click to view attachment
Sorensen codec
Click to view attachment

Maybe try playing the files with VLC media player or Mplayer

Dhar that came out nice, I wonder if distance helps? But with a linear 70 frame 0% to 100% increase only a few frames are in the 0% to 5% reflectivity questioned range. Would the results be as nice with a much slower and smaller increase?

edit: fixed number

Nancy, I think you're right. I might need an earlier version of Quicktime. I think that the problem I am having is because as soon as a Quicktime movie loads, a dialog box announcing that there is a new version of Quicktime comes up announcing that there is a later version available for download.

Unfortunately, this dialog box freezes the system. Ha!

I wonder if the new version fixes this problem. Is anyone else having this issue. Therefore the problem is not caused by a codec.

I did update Quicktime recently. This is happening on three separate machines.

Joe.

http://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?s=&am...st&p=255597

Well, I upgraded Quicktime and now it works.

Thus, I watched Sum Square's and Dhar's movie.

Sum Square, Your clip demonstrates exactly the problem I was having (no reflectivity under 0.5, very little reflectivity change from 0.51 to 10%).

However, Dhar's movie seems to have a nice smooth gradient transition from very faint levels of reflection to mirror like. That is good and what I was expecting.

Dhar, Would you provide the Ambient Occlusion settings from inside your choreography? (not the render settings).

Weird little thing in an all around fantastic program.

Joe.

I did not change anything in the chor settings. It is whatever the default settings are. Come to think of it, I don't see where you can change AO in chor.

Well, my computer is rendering right now, so I can't check it, but there is a pop-up in the chor properties that lets you choose Global color or IBL. If you choose Global Color, you can make some adjustments that affect AO.

Otherwise, what is achieved by just turning on AO in the render settings if Global Illumination is not chosen? (Maybe there is a good reason and if so, I'd like to know).

Joe.

I don't want to sound dismissive, but Idon't really know how A:M works the reflections when it comes to minute incremental percentages. I question wheather or not the monitor resolution could even show such small changes. The main concern is the "pop" of the reflection from 0% to 5%. Did you look at the graph editor? Is there anything unusual in there?

Nope to anything weird for the graph editor, the test of it I made is as simple as can be, I uploaded the project file in my first post for this topic so you can check for yourself.
The "pop" at .5% is also what bothers me (not much but it still seems like a program hiccup, and so should be examined if is), particularly that the lowest reflectivity "intensity/brightness" seems to be whats at .5% (which is also more reflective then I suspect it should be) unless blending and falloff are used (but not really the same effect as is just decreasing reflectivity). It just seems like it should be able to smoothly "fade" in.

Also when I closely examine my test I can see the difference between a .5% and a 3% setting, so I think AM can actually handle small changes well.

I don't know what to tell you, but something is definitely going on with the Ground model. I put a patch in your chor. like the one I did and it behaved as expected but the ground still "popped". I'll try again tomorrow with different models and post my findings.

I deleted your ground model and made one from scratch (a simple 4cp patch with all default settings). I then imported it twice in cor, one I put as ground and the other as simply a reflective surface at an angle just to see if it is the angle that is causing the problem. But it looks like it works as expected.

What I'm wondering now is why the white wash at the last frame?

I tried this in V13 and got the same pop around .5%.

The difference between frame 0 and 1 in Dhar's movie is pretty significant. Is that what is "as expected"?

I'd think a more gradual transition like this (created artificially in aftereffects)

Click to view attachment

is what we're looking for, right?

It works as expected only when the movie is running. But you're right, if you were to go frame by frame then you'll notice the pop. Funny how that didn't happen in my first example.

Yeah, I just took a look a that. That definitely has a better transition. So what changed?

Weird, it isn't something I need to work right right now. I was originally just checking animas3D issue and had similar weirdness to what was described when I tested it, but I could see this causing me possible problems in a future animation. If need be I'd use another program like robcat2075 did (Aura Video Paint for me).

Even if I don't need it right away, if it is a weirdness in AM it would be good to know and see dealt with so AM can become even better.

In Dhar's movie the reflection's reflection on the bottom left does seem to still pop.
And the results I'd hope for would be a bit more gradual like robcat2075's.

The white wash at the last frame escapes me too.

Maybe A:M doesn't like reflecting smooth, rounded, featureless shapes?

Its the gremlins I tell ya

Click to view attachment
Dusted off version 10.5 and here are its results for essentially the same test. The render is only from 0% to 5% reflectivity. Notice how nice and smooth it transitions, and zero popping. Also at low percentages it is much more subtle.

Hey SumSquare, it would be great if you'd send those results to AMReports (www.hash.com/reports)

send them your test prj and a render from v10.5 and v 14 or 15 and point out the different results.

I wonder if this bug got introduced whenthe renderer was altered to accomodate HDR.

I actually already did on 12-16-07 (sept for the 10.5 results which I now just added to it, per your suggestion).

By "bombing out" do you mean it goes green? Cuz that happens to me all the time.

I don't think the phrase ' "bombing out" ' was used by anyone on this topic?
If your referring to the "popping" then check out the movies on the first page of this topic, it shows reflectivity suddenly turning on without a smooth 'fade in' from 0%. That is what is being referred to.

As far as going green, I'm not completely sure what your referring to?
Do you mean the render has a green tint, or do you mean the workspace window just turns completely green?
The latter (or something similar) I kind-of remember happening sometimes because of my older PC's videocard and/or driver.

Could you be more specific?