reflection fall off

[Brian Jones]

[mitchino] “How do I get the reflection to gradually fade out the further it is from the object if you know what I mean?”

Not sure what you mean but also try gradient in the reflection channel or Fresnel in the reflection channel

[mitchino] “Also can I blur the reflection?”

Yes, turn Dispersion on in the Reflection channel. Start with small values.

[Adam Trachtenberg]

You can have reflection fade over distance by using ambient occlusion in the reflection channel.

[Donald Mitchell]

Thanks guys, but I can’t seem to get it working the way I want it to! To clarify what I mean, here’s a test render:

https://web.mac.com/itchymitchy/Site/Test_Render.html

The cards are sitting on a cube which has 100% white colour, and 100% brightness in the reflection channel with a black & white 2D – V gradient.

I’ve mucked about with the settings for ages, but one card always seems to have a slightly different falloff in the reflection than the other. I’d like to be able to have any number of objects in the scene, all with the same length of reflection fading to white.

I’m trying to recreate a traditional photographic shoot on white plexiglass.

[Brian Jones]

Ah, I see. Because the gradient is global the cards all fade at the same point in the camera view but you want them to fade based on distance from the card. So I tried Proximal and then Ambient Occlusion and Ambiente but wasn’t getting any results I liked so I tried faking it and got this.. https://homepage.mac.com/bdjones/.public/cardfade.zip
It uses two sets of “cards” one ‘normal’ and one with an alpha gradient material to fade out toward the top. The ‘normals’ have a Compositing Tag without Seen by Rays so they won’t cast a reflection but they do have Seen by Camera so we see them. The ‘faders’ have Seen by Rays so they _do_ cast a reflection (which fades since the object fades) and they have Seen by Camera turned off (not strictly necessary, I think, since they occupy the same space but I figured why not).

[Joe Rodgers]

Hey Adam, how do you go about using ambient occlusion in the reflection channel?