Reflections dissapeared

[Brian Jones]

can you post that file?

[Eric Oosterhof]

It’s nothing fancy, just a ball and a sphere. The c4d file: https://ufile.io/8yahs

[Eric Oosterhof]

It’s nothing fancy, just a floor and a sphere.

https://ufile.io/8yahs

[Eric Oosterhof]

I have also tried 3 different version of Cinema 4d which is giving me the same problem.

[Brian Jones]

Which versions? Just curious, this file is from R11 and is using just simple reflection not reflectance yet (at least until R20…).
You have a perfectly reflective texture on the only two objects in the scene and everything else is pure black so there is nothing to reflect except each other but they have identical materials (the same material). I do see the reflection of the sphere in the floor but the floor on the sphere is really hard to see (I assume it’s the fresnel). Try removing the fresnel and what do you get? I get blackness because now all a perfect reflection of all that blackness around the two objects, you could:
– make the light visible or
– you could reduce the strength of the reflection a bit or
– use Layer Fresnel (if it exists yet in R11, I don’t remember)
– add other objects in the scene for the sphere and floor to reflect besides each other (that hopefully don’t have the same perfectly reflective surface)
-etc.

[Eric Oosterhof]

I am using r11 r13 and r19 all of them gave me the same render output. Example image1. I have used fresnel like this before. This is how it looks when I copy the sphere.

Does it look the same when your render it like this or the example above? To me it almost seems like a system issue when you say its reflecting the texture perfectly.

Thanks for the answers so far!

[Steve Bentley]

I’m in R19 and I don’t get what you get when you duplicate the ball. I don’t get the arc you have at the bottom of the sphere (in yours its where the red arrows are in mine).
If you watch the GI work itself out you can see all the reflections rather harshly and that’s the best way to make sure they are all there – they can get pretty subtle once the GI is finished cooking.
The difference could be that the camera angle changed – I just slid mine over to accomodate the other ball, but I think you have gone higher so that might make another bounce off the ball in the floor (and then back to the ball) show up.

You can also change how many bounces you get in the render settings.

I’m not seeing an issue in R19. but I’m pretty sure back in R11 the reflection tab on the material didn’t have the stackable specular and reflections option that we have now, and that makes reflections much more real and much more controllable. There was also an issue circa R13 where if you didn’t let the objects reflection bounce enough times, the final (small) reflection of the other ball would be black in the first ball. That was fixed in R14 I think.

[Eric Oosterhof]

Thanks for your response!

That arc is part of the reflection not working. The render you’re showing doesn’t reflect neither – I’m missing the shiny part.
Here is something i made before i had this issue, so you can see what im after (I used softboxes for this).

[Eric Oosterhof]

Btw. Is it possible to edits posts on this website?

[Steve Bentley]

Yes, just hit reply to your post, then go up and you will see an edit button at the bottom of the list of all the posts in the thread.

Re missing reflections.
That shiny glossiness you are seeing is the reflection of the soft box. There is nothing to reflect in the ball scene you sent. Just the floor and balls.
You can force a reflection even without geometry by using the environment channel in the materials. You can put an image of the scene you want reflected in there and it will do the job right quick, but won’t reflect other objects in the scene.
The other option is to surround your scene with a giant sphere that is not visible to camera and map a scene on that. Its similar to the environment tab but does a better job because its a true reflection of the environment and the objects in the scene.
And you can mix the two techniques when you want to bend the rules of physics.