Home | VRAYforC4D Manual | Vray Materials | Material Layers

Reflection Layer

The reflection layer is for sharp reflections like you have it in mirrors, glass or water. Again the reflection layer can have its own mask, here a simple gradient makes the right side of the sphere transparent, the layers below, if activated would get visible.

Of course the transparency can be set to something in between to make the material less reflective. if a material is 100& reflective only the reflection channel is visible, like a mirror or perfect chrome, if it is 50% reflective it mixes with 50% of the layers below ( like diffuse color p.e.)

Reflection Color

Color - this is the reflection color of the material.
Brightness- use this setting to adjust the brightness of a channel color.
Texture Map - here an image texture or shader can be defined.
Mix Mode - use these parameters to mix the color and texture panes using one of four modes. The default mode for all channels is Normal. If you load a texture or shader, it is placed on a layer above the color (i.e. the texture is placed on top of the color). Please consult the Cinema4d documentation about the different mix modes.
Mix Strength - defines the mixing proportion between the texture and color.

Reflection Layer Transparency

Color - this is the transparency color of the material.
Amount - use this setting to adjust the transparency of a channel.
Texture Map - here an image texture or shader can be defined.
Mix Mode - use these parameters to mix the color and texture panes using one of four modes. The default mode for all channels is Normal. If you load a texture or shader, it is placed on a layer above the color (i.e. the texture is placed on top of the color). Please consult the Cinema4d documentation about the different mix modes.
Mix Strength - defines the mixing proportion between the texture and color.
Invert - This option simply inverts the Texture Map, so transparent and solid areas are reversed. This works for both clipped images and images with built-in alpha channels.

Reflection Layer Parameters

Cutoff - this is a threshold below which reflections will not be traced. VRAYforC4D tries to estimate the contribution of reflections to the image, and if it is below this threshold, these effects are not computed. Do not set this to 0.0 as it may cause excessively long render times in some cases.
Back side - if this is true, reflections will be computed for back-facing surfaces too. Note that this affects total internal reflections too (when refractions are computed).
Trace Depth - represents the maximum number of bounces that will be computed for reflections and refractions.
Refl Dim Distance - enables the Dim distance parameter which allows you to stop tracing reflection rays after a certain distance.
Distance -pecifies a distance after which the reflection rays will not be traced.
Falloff - a fall off radius for the dim distance..
Exit Color - the color to be returned when the maximum ray depth has been reached but the reflection has not been computed completely.

Reflection Layer Fresnel

Use Fresnel - checking this option makes the reflection strength dependent on the viewing angle of the surface. Some materials in nature (glass etc) reflect light in this manner. Note that the Fresnel effect depends on the index of refraction as well.
Fresnel IOR - the IOR to use when calculating Fresnel reflections. Normally this is locked to the Refraction IOR parameter, but you can unlock it for finer control.
Refl. Color - reflection color.
Refr. Color - refraction color.
Map Preview Size - Here you’ll find entries from 64x64 (16 KB) to 4096x4096 (64 MB). The value controls the internal resolution of the map — the higher you set this value, the more detailed the map will be in the viewport. The value has no effect on the rendered result.Proceed with caution when increasing the Map Preview Size. Higher settings require more RAM and increase the filesize of the CINEMA 4D scene. OpenGL is also affected because the map previews must be loaded into the graphics card’s memory.
Printer-friendly version
VrayC4D Group. All right reserved. (c) 2008-2010
Cinema 4D is a registered trademarks of Maxon Computer (www.maxon.net), VRAYforC4D software, VRAYforC4D logo and VRAYforC4D documentation belong to LAUBlab_Vienna (in Cooperation with Renato Tarabella and Daniele Ficini). V-Ray belongs to Chaosgroup (www.chaosgroup.com) All other brand names, product names, or trademarks belong to their respective holders.