Possible error with reflection of glass sphere

digitalartist

This may be an error in the Bryce 7 program or just a lack of understanding on my part. I made a simple animation of a glass sphere (plain glass, low reflection and refraction, default everything else) where the reflection in a 3 second time frame increases to 100%. I noticed where the sun shines through the sphere and onto the ground the intensity increase as the reflectivity of the sphere increases. Should it not decrease to nothing as the reflectivity approaches 100 since less light should get through?

Thanks

Rashad Carter

Digital,
If you can provide an image to go along with your question it will aid us in helping you out. But off hand I would say that the Optics are of the material lab works in a bit of a magical way. In nature, reflection and transparency are opposites, but in Bryce, not so much. If you want the effect you seem to be asking for then you need to animate the transparency as well so that by frame 3 your sphere will be fully solid and fully reflective as you intend. Hope this helps.

Horo

Refraction only works for transparency. Note that Refraction 100 is equal to a refractive index of 1.000. For water, which has a refractive index of around 1.33, you would enter 133.

Dave Savage

Digitalartist; Think of it as polishing a lens... it doesn't let less light through the shinier you make it's surface.

Depending on what render settings you have chosen, maybe the TA light scattering is also adding to the effect by reflecting light from the ultra shiny surface underneath the sphere too.

Having said that, I'm just running some tests here and I can't get it to alter the intensity of the light coming through the sphere to any great degree. The two stills below are the first frame and the last frame of a similar set up to the one described in the original post.

Edited to add: OK I see now, it looks to me like stray reflected light coming from the underside of the sphere.