Advanced Materials: Reflection, Glass and Motion

Advanced materials are the ones that do more than color a surface. Two of them look at the rest of the scene and show it back, as a reflection or through the object like glass. Two others move the shape itself, bending or wobbling its surface over time. One bends light through the object like a cut gem. They cost more to render than a plain finish, so they are best kept for the object that matters: the floor under a product, the glass hero piece, the blob in the middle of the landing page.

The five materials

• Reflector turns a flat surface into a mirror of the scene above it, with controllable blur, so you get anything from a polished studio floor to a soft, wet-looking reflection. It is made for floors, stages and table tops.
• Refraction is set up for a gem-like surface that bends light strongly, with colored fringes at the edges, controlled by IOR and Aberration Strength.
• Transmission is real-looking glass: the scene behind the object is rendered, then bent through it, so a cube or a logo looks like a thick piece of clear or frosted glass, with optional color fringing and a warping distortion.
• Distort pushes the surface in and out with a moving noise, so a sphere becomes a living, breathing blob.
• Wobble twists the shape back and forth over time, like jelly.

How they differ

Reflector and Transmission both depend on the scene around the object. A reflection of an empty scene is just the background color, and glass in front of nothing shows nothing, so place them where there is something to reflect or look through: other objects, an environment, a colored background. Distort and Wobble do not care about the scene at all; they change the geometry, so they look the same anywhere and work on top of a plain color.

Distort and Wobble need a shape with enough detail to bend. A sphere or a smooth model deforms nicely; a simple cube has too few points and will only move at its corners.

How to choose

• Product on a floor: Reflector on a large plane under the product. Raise Mix Strength for a mirror, raise Blur and Mix Blur for a soft, satin floor.
• Glass object or glass logo: Transmission. Thickness and Roughness are the two knobs that matter most: thick and clear for crystal, rough for frosted glass. For ready-made glass looks without the scene-capture cost, see the glass materials.
• Organic, alive hero shape: Distort on a sphere, with a moderate Distort value and a slow Speed.
• Playful, bouncy object: Wobble, with a low Factor for a gentle sway or a high one for a cartoon jiggle.

Every one of these keeps its settings in the studio panel, so you can push a preset from subtle to extreme while watching the result live.