Section 4.8.4
Finishes

The final part of a POV-Ray texture is the finish. It controls the properties of the surface of an object. It can make it shiny and reflective, or dull and flat. It can also specify what happens to light that passes through transparent pigments, what happens to light that is scattered by less-than-perfectly-smooth surfaces and what happens to light that is reflected by surfaces with thin-film interference properties. There are twelve different properties available in POV-Ray to specify the finish of a given object. These are controlled by the following keywords: ambient, diffuse, brilliance, phong, specular, metallic, reflection, refraction, caustics, attenuation, crand and iridescence. Let's design a couple of textures that make use of these parameters.

Section 4.8.4.1
Using Ambient

Since objects in POV-Ray are illuminated by light sources, the portions of those objects that are in shadow would be completely black were it not for the first two finish properties, ambient and diffuse. Ambient is used to simulate the light that is scattered around the scene that does not come directly from a light source. Diffuse determines how much of the light that is seen comes directly from a light source. These two keywords work together to control the simulation of ambient light. Let's use our gray sphere to demonstrate this. Let's also change our plane back to its original green and white checkered pattern.

plane {y,-1.5 pigment {checker Green, White} } sphere { <0,0,0>, 1 pigment {Gray75} finish { ambient .2 diffuse .6 }

In the above example, the default values for ambient and diffuse are used. We render this to see what the effect is and then make the following change to the finish.

ambient 0 diffuse 0

The sphere is black because we have specified that none of the light coming from any light source will be reflected by the sphere. Let's change diffuse back to the default of 0.6.

Now we see the gray surface color where the light from the light source falls directly on the sphere but the shaded side is still absolutely black. Now let's change diffuse to 0.3 and ambient to 0.3.

The sphere now looks almost flat. This is because we have specified a fairly high degree of ambient light and only a low amount of the light coming from the light source is diffusely reflected towards the camera. The default values of ambient and diffuse are pretty good averages and a good starting point. In most cases, an ambient value of 0.1 ... 0.2 is sufficient and a diffuse value of 0.5 ... 0.7 will usually do the job. There are a couple of exceptions. If we have a completely transparent surface with high refractive and/or reflective values, low values of both ambient and diffuse may be best. Here is an example.

sphere { <0,0,0>, 1 pigment { White filter 1 } finish { ambient 0 diffuse 0 reflection .25 refraction 1 ior 1.33 specular 1 roughness .001 } } }

This is glass, obviously. Glass is a material that takes nearly all of its appearance from its surroundings. Very little of the surface is seen because it transmits or reflects practically all of the light that shines on it. See glass.inc for some other examples.

If we ever need an object to be completely illuminated independently of the lighting situation in a given scene we can do this artificially by specifying an ambient value of 1 and a diffuse value of 0. This will eliminate all shading and simply give the object its fullest and brightest color value at all points. This is good for simulating objects that emit light like lightbulbs and for skies in scenes where the sky may not be adequately lit by any other means.

Let's try this with our sphere now.

sphere { <0,0,0>, 1 pigment { White } finish { ambient 1 diffuse 0 } } }

Rendering this we get a blinding white sphere with no visible highlights or shaded parts. It would make a pretty good streetlight.

Section 4.8.4.2
Using Surface Highlights

In the glass example above, we noticed that there were bright little hotspots on the surface. This gave the sphere a hard, shiny appearance. POV-Ray gives us two ways to specify surface specular highlights. The first is called Phong highlighting. Usually, Phong highlights are described using two keywords: phong and phong_size. The float that follows phong determines the brightness of the highlight while the float following phong_size determines its size. Let's try this.

sphere { <0,0,0>, 1 pigment { Gray50 } finish { ambient .2 diffuse .6 phong .75 phong_size 25 } }

Rendering this we see a fairly broad, soft highlight that gives the sphere a kind of plastic appearance. Now let's change phong_size to 150. This makes a much smaller highlight which gives the sphere the appearance of being much harder and shinier.

There is another kind of highlight that is calculated by a different means called specular highlighting. It is specified using the keyword specular and operates in conjunction with another keyword called roughness. These two keywords work together in much the same way as phong and phong_size to create highlights that alter the apparent shininess of the surface. Let's try using specular in our sphere.

sphere { <0,0,0>, 1 pigment { Gray50 } finish { ambient .2 diffuse .6 specular .75 roughness .1 } } }

Looking at the result we see a broad, soft highlight similar to what we had when we used phong_size of 25. Change roughness to .001 and render again. Now we see a small, tight highlight similar to what we had when we used phong_size of 150. Generally speaking, specular is slightly more accurate and therefore slightly more realistic than phong but you should try both methods when designing a texture. There are even times when both phong and specular may be used on a finish.

Section 4.8.4.3
Using Reflection and Metallic

There is another surface parameter that goes hand in hand with highlights, reflection. Surfaces that are very shiny usually have a degree of reflection to them. Let's take a look at an example.

sphere { <0,0,0>, 1 pigment { Gray50 } finish { ambient .2 diffuse .6 specular .75 roughness .001 reflection .5 } } }

We see that our sphere now reflects the green and white checkered plane and the black background but the gray color of the sphere seems out of place. This is another time when a lower diffuse value is needed. Generally, the higher reflection is the lower diffuse should be. We lower the diffuse value to 0.3 and the ambient value to 0.1 and render again. That is much better. Let's make our sphere as shiny as a polished gold ball bearing.

sphere { <0,0,0>, 1 pigment { BrightGold } finish { ambient .1 diffuse .1 specular 1 roughness .001 reflection .75 } } }

That is very close but there is something wrong with the highlight. To make the surface appear more like metal the keyword metallic is used. We add it now to see the difference.

sphere { <0,0,0>, 1 pigment { BrightGold } finish { ambient .1 diffuse .1 specular 1 roughness .001 reflection .75 metallic } } }

We see that the highlight has taken on the color of the surface rather than the light source. This gives the surface a more metallic appearance.

Section 4.8.4.4
Using Refraction

Objects that are transparent allow light to pass through them. With some substances, the light is bent as it travels from one substance into the other because of the differing optical densities of the objects. This is called refraction. Water and glass both bend light in this manner. To create water or glass, POV-Ray gives us a way to specify refraction. This is done with the keywords refraction and ior. The amount of light that passes through an object is determined by the value of the filtering and/or transmittance channel in the pigment. We should use the refraction value only to switch refraction on or off using values of 1 or 0 respectively (or the boolean values on and off). See section "Refraction" for a detailed explanation of the reasons.

The degree of refraction, i. e. the amount of bending that occurs, is given by the keyword ior, short for index of refraction. If we know the index of refraction of the substance we are trying to create, we may just use that. For instance, water is 1.33, glass is around 1.45 and diamond is 1.75. Let's return to the example of a glass sphere we used earlier.

sphere { <0,0,0>, 1 pigment { White filter 1 } finish { ambient 0 diffuse 0 reflection .25 refraction 1 ior 1.45 specular 1 roughness .001 } } }

We render this again and notice how the plane that is visible through the sphere is distorted and turned upside-down. This is because the light passing through the sphere is being bent or refracted to the degree specified. We reduce ior to 1.25 and re-render. We increase it to 1.75 and re-render. We notice how the distortion changes.

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