Another case of feature abuse turned into unreasonable feature rejection.

I agree that some people, in an attempt to achieve an increased level of realism, overdo the reflections and therefore fail.

Regardless of what you seek, realism, artistic painterly expression, cartoon, there is something you seek to adjust that has a right amount. Any amount OVER OR UNDER that amount is the wrong amount. For realism, zero reflection is wrong. 50% reflection is wrong. Somewhere in between is right, and it has to be based on viewing angle - the Fresnel effect.

The little montage image is from my lousy phone camera - which seems incapable of taking a non-blurry picture or getting the colors right at all. Nevertheless, you should be able to see that this is a real floor in a real office. The doorway on the left leads into my real office. I have a real window in it which you cannot see. But you sure can see the window in my door.

Similarly, that real magazine is on the real wood floor, which is rarely polished, but still shows significant reflection of the magazine when viewed from a shallow angle. Now I understand that you don't often get on the floor and photograph magazines. But if you look down the hall towards our kitchen, which is about 100 feet away from my office, you can perfectly see people eating in there. You can easily tell what color clothing they are wearing, while only looking at the floor. And this is from a dirty, pockmarked floor. This office used to be a shoe factory. The floor is FULL of defects and black spots. But it is still shiny as hell when viewed from the right angle, which happens all the time in real life.

I understand that many people have little interest in realism. I enjoy the puzzle of realistic renders and  have little interest in cartoons, because they are not a puzzle, they are easy. The world is full of people with different goals. For those who seek renders that look more real than fake, either because it's just hard (me), or because they need it, paying attention to and using reflections is crucial.

Yes, there are some who finally figured out how to do reflections and are overusing them in their renders. This is human nature. The first time I was allowed to actually drink beer, I drank enormous quantities of it and encouraged all my friends to do the same. I no longer do that.

If somebody makes a render where the whole point is LOOK SHINY, then God bless them. They are now artistic 21 year olds abusing alcohol. In a little while, they'll calm down. But right behind them are the 20 year olds who can't wait to be 21 themselves, and as soon as they learn to plug in a Reflect node, they're going to make the same kind of render, even though their elders have moved on to morphing enormous breasts with incredibly detailed specular reflections on the nipple.

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Renderosity forum reply notifications are wonky. If I read a follow-up in a thread, but I don't myself reply, then notifications no longer happen AT ALL on that thread. So if I seem to be ignoring a question, that's why. (Updated September 23, 2019)