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    Reflections on TV Screen

    Nathi Tappan(nathitappan)
    posted to: Lighting the Scene

    I'm a little puzzled. I'm nearly done with my final project, but I can't get the reflections on the TV Screen to work. I wonder if you guys can spot what I'm missing?


    On material preview it reflects the HDRI. But on Cycles rendered it is just pitch black. I tried bumping up the glossy bounces, but nothing is reflected. If I put on a bright spot light in front of it, nothing! It's like the TV is a black hole lol.

    Any suggestions?

    Reply
    • Omar Domenech replied

      Did you up the transmission slider? Or perhaps it's the always sneaky thing that happens, some object somewhere that is supposed to be turned off for the render, is not off and just hidden for the viewport. 

      1 love
    • Grady Pruitt(gradyp) replied

      Looks to me like the "reflection" you're seeing in the material preview one is from the environment texture, not the room itself. Easiest thing to test the cycles version... if you put a light in front of it, is it reflecting the light? If that's the case, then at the current camera angle, it's just not picking up enough light from the environment to reflect anything.

      From what I'm testing on a simlar scene I have, that value should work, so if you were to put a light source directly in front of the TV, you should be able to see it reflect back.

      1 love
    • Nathi Tappan(nathitappan) replied

      Yeah, it 100% is the HDRI reflected, which is odd, because there are walls all around the TV lol. 

      I also tried a point light in front of it before. Here's the crazy part: I disconnected the material, and connected a default BSDF on that face instead. It turns white as expected in material preview. It still is a pitch black hole on the cycles render. I certainly messed something up. Will start a TV over I think. Unless you guys have any other ideas of what could sneakly happen?


    • Martin Bergwerf replied

      Hi Nathi,

      That is very weird indeed! 

      Any chance I can I see that file, please?

      1 love
    • Martin Bergwerf replied

      It does have a negative Scale, but that shouldn't cause the black hole effect.


    • Nathi Tappan(nathitappan) replied

      Right? It's really puzzling me. 

      Ha! I didn't notice the scale. I just modeled the house and the furniture. Admittedly the TV and most decorations were downloaded. I might just model my own TV lol. I just feel too curious to know what's wrong though? 

      Here's the file Martin, please don't judge the vertices mess on my outside walls. I imported it from the full house model and just deleted a bunch to save computing power. It's not pretty. Lol

      https://drive.google.com/file/d/1HLZPUodx2g9GNy9GpgnhgBJglhOyhqjj/view?usp=sharing

    • Martin Bergwerf replied

      HI Nathi,

      I don't know what is going on here, but it's the screen Plane. I Added a Plane in Edit Mode and gave it the same Material (changed the Color) and look at that:

      Screen.png

      So, what you can do, is Delete the black screen and Add a new one (Duplicating the screen doesn't seem to work, it has to be a new Plane). Don't forget to turn of Proportional Editing.

      1 love
    • Nathi Tappan(nathitappan) replied

      Ha! So wild! Go figure. It's like a glitch of some sort.

      Thanks Martin, I'll do that! 
      Though now that I've seen the geometry of the TV behind the screen I got extra scared of this TV. The wonders of downloading "ready" assets eh?

      Lol

    • Sascha Feider replied

      Sorry for being late to the party.
      There's a custom normal attribute on the model. If you delete that, the reflections work fine. I assume that's from whatever program this model was made with.


      And yes, the model is questionable.

      • 💯
      2 loves
    • Nathi Tappan(nathitappan) replied

      Ha! So we weren't going crazy! There was something odd going on indeed.

      Sweet, thanks Sascha! Now I'll remember to search in the attributes next time something else happens like this.

      ps. Dang! Your viewport looks so much cleaner than mine. I really wish I could leave the macOS.

      1 love
    • Sascha Feider(SFE-Viz) replied

      Yeah, many downloaded assets come with weird stuff from other programs. That’s why I prefer my trusted sources.

      Had to turn on viewport denoising to show the reflections. Without it was pretty noisy too. Interiors. 🤷

      1 love
    • Omar Domenech replied

      I bet a addon was to blame. I don't know it for a fact, I just know so. The scene is looking super cool and realistic by the way Nat. 

      1 love
    • Nathi Tappan(nathitappan) replied

      Lol. No add ons on this one, other than the downloading assets ones (IKEA, Blender Kit, iMeshh). Ah, and Render Raw. Can't live without that one anymore. Lol.

      Thanks Omar! I'm glad to hear that. I'll post the reference photo when it's complete. That's remarkably close to my real living room! I'm excited!

      On a side note: I guess I should have removed those from the file, but if any of my models are good enough for your use, please feel free to use it. Just please do not use the photographs, those are actually personal photos 🤷🏻‍♀️

      If it has crazy topology I swear it was downloaded. Lol. All the furniture are my models though... 

    • Tom Fransson(tfsuper3d) replied

      Oh, custom normal attributes, added to my knowledge collection, thanks Sascha. Yep, thumbs up Nathi, a very cool scene!

      1 love