kwhitt

Thanks Mick. I tried several different searches all to no avail.

Tech support told me nothing. I read it somewhere on this forum. It is my understanding from the thread that it has been reported. I am not the one who found the bug.

I know this has been reported, but I can't find the post with the solution. Would someone mind commenting or pointing me to the correct thread? Thanks, Kevin

You are correct!

Chad - I've been dealing with pugentsystems.com. They are currently 4 weeks out, but the customer service is great. Their prices are in line when I've compared. Geno is my contact there.

Yep, it's here this morning...

I have run into that, but it usually clears up when I make it one large custom countertop. It is happening to me when the cabinet countertops are segmented. You might try ticking "global mapping" under the texture tab in the materials dialog box.

Mick - I don't see your uploaded images, but thanks for confirming. Now that I've spent the whole day on this, what does it mean? Nothing really as I've spent hours trying to put what I've learned into practical use in my bathroom scene. I've removed the wall and substituted for p-solids as the shower glass, drawn the p-solids in positive and negative directions in case the normals got flipped, removed the windows, changed my camera view to outside the shower tile volume, made the shower part of a larger room, tried various material adjustments, turned the p-solids into surfaces, etc., etc.... I can't recreate this simple setup into a practical application for a real scene. Aside from all of this, I am excited to see the direction taken by Chief as pertains to their rendering engine. I'm finished! I think I'll pass on the new computer and turn off refraction for now. It's still much better than anyone else is able to do in this market and the customer just won't notice there's no refraction. Thanks for all the help today. Hope I didn't wear you out! Kevin

It's definitely showing up. Here's a shot of a cylinder reflected in the mirror on the camera side of the refractive glass. I'd be curious to see what you get. I posted the file again in my latest post so as not to confuse with the others.

Mick - I think you misunderstood my method. The wall is red intentionally, so that it unmistakably shows up in the mirror reflection. Here is the same scene with a funky damask wallpaper and the pattern shows up in the reflection through reflective glass on the left mirror which is the shiny metal material hack. The right mirror is the standard material set to mirror under properties and shows no reflection. This cannot be mistaken for an aberrant red hue. The engine, it seems, is capable of showing reflections through glass under certain circumstances. Now only to find out what those circumstances might be... Attached is the file for confirmation. I think Chief's new engine is robust, but it now needs physically correct materials to complete it. Reflections Behind Glass02.plan

Thanks Christina for confirming the export works fine on your machine.

Thanks again Mark. I've decided to render the whole thing without refraction and call it done. I will most likely not be buying the new machine if it provides no advantage. I just don't understand how it is working as I would it expect it to in the last scene file I posted while not at all in others. Reflections Behind Glass.plan

Hi Christina - thanks for running the test on the RTX3090. The second image looks to me like it is the standard render (not PBR) or did I misunderstand something? Kevin

Thanks Mick. The mirror material I used was from the library and I altered the settings from mirror to shiny metal. It was a new material. Would you mind rendering my scene using the saved camera right out of the box with no changes? It works for me every time - just tested again...

@Kbird1 @MarkMc @Renerabbitt I know that the normal direction on the surface of the symbol in other render engines determines whether or not refraction will work within a volume. There doesn't seem to be a way in Chief to reverse the normals short of making a symbol out of your glass model and reserving within the symbol DBX. I thought this might account for when it sometimes works and sometimes it doesn't. I tried this experiment and it failed too.

Yes, I am still trying to figure out if it works or not. The simple file I uploaded earlier (attached again) seems to work when the mirror is a shiny metal. The glass is refractive and refraction is ticked on in the PBR DBX. Mick - would you mind taking a look to confirm? Reflections Behind Glass.plan

Mark - do you have the scene you posted earlier? I'd like to try rendering that on my RTX5000. If successful, I won't purchase the new machine. Kevin

Mark - thanks for the reply. It sounds like you are saying that Chief is capable of reflections through refractive glass. I tested your theory about the reflective objects inside a symbol and it didn't seem to make any difference. I deleted the tile shower symbol and moved the mirrors outside of the wall cabinet framing and the results were the same. It takes about 35 seconds to export CAM04 on my machine. I've had no problem. If it's true that Chief can do what I want, it sure would be nice if someone could render my scene on the recommended graphics card. That said, it looks as though Mick has already done that and got the same results as me... Thanks again for the time, Kevin

Sorry for being dense, but that's a "NO" to my original question and tech support is incorrect? @MarkMc - Mark - in your sample file, you had refractions disabled? Thanks all, Kevin

Rene - thanks for the reply. I am still not sure what I am looking at here. Does the glass you show in the image above have refraction enabled or is this your general material hack? Or have you disabled refractions in the PBR DBX? I still don't feel like I've got an answer to my original question. Is Chief capable of showing reflection behind refractive glass if I have the right graphics card? Nathan in tech support told me yesterday that it was possible. @MarkMc shows it in his sample file. I don't have the recommended card, so cannot test. If not possible to do what I want, I doubt I'll spend thousands on another machine when I just bought one in September 2020. Thanks again for your help with this matter, Kevin. You are probably right about the textures being too high res. I come from a background where we would render 4k plus images and the higher res textures are necessary. In fact, I have an entire library of texture maps some of which go up to 8k. I agree it is overkill for a less than 2k JPG image out of Chief. I didn't bother lowering them as my machine can handle it.

Mark - I never thought about the shower tile being one huge symbol. It may be preventing light from accessing this area. The mirrors at the wall are also sunken inside a wall cabinet that makes up the frame. I'll do some more testing without the shower tile symbol and report back. Thanks, Kevin

@Kbird1 - That still doesn't explain the problem with CAM07 attached. The metal on the handshower does not reflect when viewed through glass. It may, again, be a material problem and can be resolved using the Shiny Metal with higher roughness. I'll test that later after I've done some real work. The door casings and cabinet fronts appear to have had reflection from the very beginning as they are only specular highlights (not true reflections). It's starting to appear as though my RTX5000 card is quite capable after all.

@Kbird1 More testing... It's the mirror material that's the problem. When I change it to a shiny metal with the attached settings, it works fine on my RTX500 even through physical glass. Of course, bloom doesn't show through glass, but that is a limitation of most render engines. Attached is the scene file. Would you mind running it on your RTX3080? Thanks, Kevin Reflections Behind Glass.plan

@MarkMc - Mark - is the glass a general material as Rene suggested or a real glass material with refraction? Would you mind posting the scene file, so that I can test? If what you're saying is right, then reflections do occur behind glass. I'd really like to come to a conclusion today before I drop thousands on a new machine. @Kbird1 - Mick - If Mark will provide the scene file, would you mind trying it out on your RTX3080? I'll make a similar attempt with the RTX5000 card I have now. I tried the scene file you posted and couldn't get it to work properly either.

Mick - I just tested your file and I can't get it to work either. I think the only reason the invisible tick worked on my bathroom scene is that I have shower channel around the perimeter. The glass is not there and only appears to be as it's surrounded. The shower door hinges were added manually as they weren't oriented correctly to be added in the door DBX (notice the door handle is missing). So, it appears that reflections behind glass do not work with the RTX3080 either. I will call tech support again today as Nathan told me it was possible with the right graphics card. This is disappointing. @Renerabbitt - I watched your guest appearance on Dan Bauman's 3rd episode of What's New in X13 - very helpful. You do mention this problem with the glass door cabinets in your scene example; however, switching to a general material with transparency eliminates all refraction which is key to photorealism in glass. I don't agree that this workaround should be accepted as "the nature of the beast" as there are plenty of real-time rendering engines that deal with refraction correctly (in fact all of them do of which I am aware). I imagine Chief will eventually solve this problem and your "fix" is the best we can do for now... The refraction issue aside, it's still a rather robust rendering engine and the results are impressive.