Can you only render reflection

Support Materials and Textures
1

I know we can set materials to render shadow only, but is there a way to render reflection only?

2

you cant set it in the material settings but you can do it with nodes.
put the reflecting object on a seperate render layer and activate the refl pass for that layer,
this pass then only puts out the raytraced reflections.

3

thanks will give it a try

4

Cant get this to work

Can anyone give more info on how to set this up?

I’ve got add object, and a floor. I want the floor to reflect the object only, i dont want the floor itself to be rendered.

5

Just set the floor to be transparent.

6

Hey poke,

thanks for the post, since I was having the same question.

I have a floor that is reflecting an object, and I need the reflection only because I want to integrate the object in a real footage. I’m doing the compositing in AfterEffects, so I tought of this solution:

By setting your floor with a material with the maximum reflectivity, you obtain a sharp reflection. To make the floor “invisible”, I set the world with a flash green color so that the floor reflect the green color of the sky. You’ll obtain your reflection on a green background! (Reflection on green screen ohoh!)

Now you just have to do a little keying to take off the green, and a little color correction to obtain the right thing in your compositing.

Hope it could be useful!

7

Hi,

In Render Layers, disable Combined and enable Refl. This should make only raytraced reflections render.

8

Rawpigeon, this will render the whole floor, since it’s also reflecting the whole world.

9

The simple solution. involves setting ONLY the object you want to reflect as ‘Traceable’ in the material properties, and no other object that would otherwise reflect. Then you have the reflecting plane set to ‘Fade to Sky Color’.

If you need a more complicated solution then you need to play with render layers and the reflection pass.