the material panle has 3 color settings
Diffuse specular and mirror each with their own color and alpha
but there is alos the shader panel with it’s mirror parameters
i read the documentations for material byt i’mhaving some problem to understand the difference between mirror in the mateiral and shader panel
and also what is the difference between specular and miiror it tough these where the same!
sometimes people refer to tramsitted spec like color trnaparency ect…
blender 2.45 has something about this?
The Mir setting on the Material panel is just the color of the light reflected back. Usually, for normal mirrors, use White. However, some mirrors color the reflection, so you can change the color by clicking on the swatch.
The Mirror Transp panel determines how and whether the mirror actually is active and reflects things. If you set RayMir to something >0, then the mirror is active. The reflection will be the tinted the color you set on the Material panel.
what about the difference between spec and mirror
in blender i mean
in life spec is the same then mirror as i remember of
you have diffuse reflection and a part that is specular or mirror like if we are talking let say about a wall reflection or a real mirror
Ricky, the way I think of Spec is the direct reflection of the light source. That is to say the white round spot that a lamp casts on a less the matte surface. Mir on the other hand is the refection of the surrounding scene and indeed spec and mir could be different colors do to IOR differences on complex surfaces. For example: As Papasmurf stated, some mirrored objects color the reflections in them. Look at a Red Christmas ball, it will reflect the room around it and tint all the reflections to red. However, a strong light shined on the surface will show a White specular reflection. This is do to the fact that the surface of the ball is clear glass and the reflective surface is Red metallic paint on the back of the glass. Which gives two reflective surfaces overlapped.
i’m tring do understand the blender model and it aint easy
there is another phenomenum too ambiant light from the world- if you make the sky red it will color the objects in the scene red - but may be that’s another thing
have you ever kins of a drwings showing the different rays in and out of a let say red ruby
1/2 transparent shiowing the differente name use in blender to show the differences
Ambient light in the real world is light that is reflected off of all the objects around you. For example if you are in a totally white room with one window. The Ambient light would be white, because of the light from the window bouncing off of the white walls. If you change the walls to red, the ambient light would be red. However in both rooms the direct light (from the window) would be white. Blender can mimic this effect using AO (Ambient occlusion) which you can color if you like or just leave it white.
In Blender’s internal renderer everything is approximated. There are no True physical effects being calculated. Take your example of a blue diamond. You can use RayMir at a low level to get the slight reflections of your surroundings that would occur on the polished surface of the diamond. You would use Spec to get the white highlights that would come from the light sources in your scene, and your RayTrans to get the light passing through the diamond to pick up a blue tint (ie produce a blue shadow). You will not however, get light dispersion or Caustics from the Blender internal render. You would need to use Yafray or another external render engine like Indigo or Kerkythea to get “true” caustic effects. All of these external engines are free to use.
If you are wanting accurate caustic light dispersion (which makes for beautiful gems) then yes you would need to use another engine. BI is a very good and fast scan-line renderer which is great for animations. But, it does have some limits like caustics. There are ways to Fake caustics but, if you are just looking for a still image, use Yafray.
specular reflection or specular highlight are the same or simply highlights.
in BI and with many other engines you fake the specular reflection which as
mentioned is actually the reflection of the light source.
Diffuse light no highlight.
In engines like Yafaray or others the specular highlight is calculated
automatically for you. if the surface is smooth glossy you have a very fine and hard
highlight. the more the surface gets rough the more spread and less intense is
the specular highlight.
this also means objects WITHOUT a reflective surface show NO highlight simply because the highlight is scattered so much you simply do not see it.
everything is reflective when it is smooth and most materials actually have a slight
mirror reflection in their natural aspect.
I guess we have the spec diffuse system simply because at one point we did not had
ray traced reflections and thus needed somehow something to simulate it.
i think the trend soon gets more and more to physical correct models but it is also nice
to be able to play with the specular highlight simply for design / creative purpose.