I want to make a skating rink texture for P12 (Firefly). Because of the nature of the scene, the ice layer is atop an opaque layer below with a logo. But I want the vague reflections visible. Any suggestions as to the material room settings?

Maybe make the ice volumetric, so that the floor shows through, but somewhat clouded.

I'd go for PhysicalSurface Root, very low Roughness, very high subsurface values.

Edit: wait no sorry, I just noticed you said Firefly. Sorry, my Firefly knowledge is rusty at best by now - what I said above miiight work but I'm not sure.

seachnasaigh posted at 11:17AM Fri, 04 June 2021 - #4420473

Maybe make the ice volumetric, so that the floor shows through, but somewhat clouded.

OK, so how is that done? What about the rest of the settings for the ice layer?

People have SuperFly on the brain. There are no volumetric effects in FireFly. Nor do you need any for this material.

Go back 12 years and have a look:

https://www.renderosity.com/rr/mod/forumpro/?thread_id=2763285

So that thread didn't actually run its course but it gives some thoughts to how to approach this.

As with any reflection shader, you want to use a Reflect node, modulated by the Fresnel_Blend to get it to behave like real life.

You would do well to have some sort of scratch texture image to help with the surface realism. Depending on which image you choose, I'd blend it in with the rink paint image using possibly different techniques.

I'm using Poser 11 here which means we can do this easier than we did in 2009.

You want your paint image (I used Boston Bruins logo) and also a scratch texture. I found that one free on the web. It has white where there are strong scratches, black for clean surface. We also need the negative of it but I make that on the fly with the Math Subtract node.

You blend the two textures with the Blender and that's your diffuse color.

The inverse (negative) of the scratch texture goes into a Fresnel_Blend which means we get stronger reflections where there are no scratches, and the strength varies correctly with the angle of incidence. That is the factor we use for the Reflection_Value. A slightly softened Reflect node is used for the actual reflection.

We also wire the inverse of the reflection value into the Diffuse_Value (because conservation of energy says so).

One would hope that the PhysicalSurface root node would do all this but sadly the devs didn't bother building it correctly for FireFly. So I built this out of more basic nodes.

Here's the result (with some props thrown on for reflections).

From a lower angle of incidence the surface reflections get stronger, as they should, and the diffuse reflections (subsurface) get weaker in the correct proportion.

The texture I used is from here - it's the second one.

https://seamless-pixels.blogspot.com/2012/09/free-seamless-metal-textures_28.html

Thanks BB, once again.

bagginsbill posted at 9:59AM Mon, 21 June 2021 - #4420538

You want your paint image (I used Boston Bruins logo) and also a scratch texture. I found that one free on the web. It has white where there are strong scratches, black for clean surface. We also need the negative of it but I make that on the fly with the Math Subtract node.

You blend the two textures with the Blender and that's your diffuse color.

The inverse (negative) of the scratch texture goes into a Fresnel_Blend which means we get stronger reflections where there are no scratches, and the strength varies correctly with the angle of incidence. That is the factor we use for the Reflection_Value. A slightly softened Reflect node is used for the actual reflection.

We also wire the inverse of the reflection value into the Diffuse_Value (because conservation of energy says so).

First, thank you for your help!
Second, good to see another B's fan here!

bagginsbill posted at 10:20AM Mon, 21 June 2021 - #4420540

Here's the result (with some props thrown on for reflections).

What are your render settings here?

wolfmanjim posted

What are your render settings here?

Ha - you asked just as I went on a vacation where I did not take a computer. (Probably the first time, ever) I just got back.

Honestly I didn't save the file so I can't be sure. I recall only turning on Indirect Light - mostly everything at default FireFly values.