ReflectiveSurface

The ReflectiveSurface node allows you to generate mirror-like reflections, translucency, transmission and more from ScanlineRender’s ray-tracing architecture.

To learn more about the workflow, see ReflectiveSurface: Generating Reflections.

Inputs and Controls

Connection Type

Connection Name

Function

Input

unnamed

An unnamed input for connecting the ReflectiveSurface node to your node graph.

refl

An optional input to control reflection.

trans

An optional input to control transmission.

Control (UI)

Knob (Scripting)

Default Value

Function

ReflectiveSurface Tab

Visibility sides_mode both-sides

Choose whether material is visible for both-sides, front-side or back-side faces. Also toggle:

Camera - material is visible to camera rays

Shadow - material is visible to shadow

Reflection Percentage reflection_percentage 1 Amount of light reflection vs. transmission. From 0% - 100%, where 100% represents a mirror or chrome surface and 0% represents clear glass or plastic. Note that even at 0% reflectance the surface will reflect some light at acute angles due to the fresnel effect when the Fresnel Power control is > 0.
Reflection Tint reflection_tint 1 Tint color of the reflection.
Transmission Tint transmission_tint 1 Tint color of the transmission.
Fresnel Bias fresnel_bias 0.5 Fresnel effect bias (power). Sets the amount of reflectivity you see, typically based on the angle that you look at a surface.
Index of Refraction (ior) index_of_refraction 1.57 Index-of-refraction value of surface. Here’s a list of commonly used values: vacuum 1.0, air @ stp 1.00029, ice 1.31, water @ 20c 1.33, acetone 1.36, ethyl alcohol 1.36, fluorite 1.433, fused quartz 1.46, glycerine 1.473, glass low 1.52, glass med 1.57 , glass high 1.62, diamond 2.417.
Surface Sides sided_mode prim-attrib

Hint to renderer that the surface backface should be shaded like the front, ie a thin double-sided surface. The default prim-attrib behavior is to retrieve the sides info from the primitive ‘doubleSided’ attribute, if it exists.

This hint is important for the handling of normals on the surface backface especially when determining reflection/refraction angles.

Set to double if the surface is open like a card mesh and both front and back sides should be shaded.

Set to single if the surface is closed like a cube or character mesh where only front faces should be shaded and backfaces are culled.
Cutout Enable cutout_mode_enable off Enable cutout (holdout, matte) mode for this surface. If enabled, the surface acts as a cutout for surfaces behind this one. All color and color/matte aov channels produced by this surface are left empty (black, zero) with the exception of depth and other data aov channels which can be controlled separately.
Cutout Data Aovs cutout_mode_removes_data_aovs off If Cutout Enable is on, controls whether the depth and other data aov channels also get cut out. Sometimes keeping depth is desired so that the cutout object will still z-composite, but other times the cutout object is intended to completely remove or delete the objects behind it so the depth and data aovs of this object are also removed.