Hey guys, so I was trying to make a text and objects scene. but i noticed the Lights in the Reflection are Hard Shaped. How do I make them look softer/blurry edge in reflections like the sun reflecting in this scene
i tried following this tutorial, but the plane is also seen in the reflections: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TGrWPXG86CE&list=UULtalrGxNZcu090NJdq4k2g
is there an easier way to make the lights softer in reflections?
t.i.a.
Increase the Roughness of your material
but wouldn’t that make the Material look like brushed metal? instead of chrome?
I dunno, but if you want the edges of reflections softer, you have to to increase the roughness- that’s what that parameter is for
You can’t have it both ways. If you want softer reflections then you have to increase roughness. Ray tracing is a global function in the material’s hierarchy so there exists no individual method by which you can differentiate between objects that you wish to have sharp reflections and those you wish to have softer reflections. You can make two renders and rotoscope it by hand but I don’t think you’re looking for that answer. Alternatively - because you’re using an environment map - you can configure your collections and view layers so that the offending light(s) doesn’t even affect the chrome objects. That requires you to learn how to segregate your objects and lights via collections and view layers and then recombine them in the compositor.
If that is a sunlight, make it smaller in diameter and change its angle so that it aligns/overlaps with the sun reflection in the HDRI.
Second option, blur it in post or apply a glow effect.
Or you can use light nodes (if you are using cycles). I would explain it to you step by step but the truth is I am very bad at teaching so I better upload an example file
-Here I enabled the light visibility in the object properties(of the light object), so you can make the necessary changes and then turn it off.
and the file:
AreaLight_gradient_V1.blend (1.3 MB)
This configuration was made with blender 3.6 and it seems that in 4.0 the behavior of some coordinates for the texture of light objects changed. I don’t know if those changes will affect this setup so good luck.
Hi
Reading the answers, I am surprised. There are easier ways to create soft lights,
that will be useful in many older versions of Blender. Soft lights, sharp reflexions.
I made a quick tutorial showing 2 ways to do it.
You can by example create a volumetric light with emission nodes, like this
In the video I also show a version on a BSDF plane instead of volumetric.
It’s basically creating simple mesh lights in Blender.
