Reflection workarounds?

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  • Hey team,

    I'm aware of Enscape's shortcomings in the area of screen space reflections - however, we've recently moved a project through to another stage of design, and as the complexity has increased, we are now suffering such poor reflections that the images are nigh unusable. I have tested with earlier model versions, and they remain working fine... so seemingly a model complexity issue (likely Revit to SKP geometry).

    I am wondering if there are any known methods to help address this? Am I wasting my time in setting up certain layers/tags within SKP to hide geometry in certain views to try and restore reflections? Does anyone have any tips for tracking down rogue geometry that may be causing issues? Will texture sizes be part of the problem too? Enscape is an incredible tool regardless, but this issue is cropping up time and again for us.

    Running Enscape 3.0.2 on dual xeon with RTX3090. Scene runs impeccably on this machince at ultra. Have tried RTX on/off with no result.

    Cheers all

    • Official Post

    eliotbnz , first off, in case they are not confidential, can you please share a few screenshots with me of those said reflections?


    Generally, in summary: "our algorithm prefers to select those objects that have the most impact on the lighting in the scene, so sometimes certain elements (especially highly detailed, small objects) might not be visible in this simplified version of the scene." - This may not be extremely helpful so it would also be good to see the reflections directly to perhaps help with that.

  • eliotbnz , first off, in case they are not confidential, can you please share a few screenshots with me of those said reflections?


    Generally, in summary: "our algorithm prefers to select those objects that have the most impact on the lighting in the scene, so sometimes certain elements (especially highly detailed, small objects) might not be visible in this simplified version of the scene." - This may not be extremely helpful so it would also be good to see the reflections directly to perhaps help with that.

    Thanks for the reply Demian


    Top is original, bottom is current. The gold facade you see reflected in the top image is contained within the view frustum (I have cropped the image for confidentiality reasons) in both scenes, yet now only appears in the older file. They pop in and out of reflections as you move around the scene. They are fairly simple geometry - perhaps 20 faces per panel? But quite large, they space inter-floor so are around 3 metres tall each.

  • I encounter the same types of limitations in Enscape, as our projects are large as well- though all interior artificial lighting. In my experience, the larger the scale of the model, the more of this behavior is seen. There is an unknown limitation on camera distance and what light bounces and details Enscape chooses to render. As @Demian Gutberlet said, the algorithm chooses- and we lose some control.


    I have an example here, where I commonly hit the artificial lighting limitation. Lights pop in and out as I move around the model space (far away objects lose their lighting). In my case...+/- 30k sq. ft. grocery stores/supermarkets.


    What would be KILLER, is the ability to add a box selection of each scene where Enscape will tell the algorithm to primarily focus on. Basically, tell it to give that section more passes or something? Though I suspect I'd probably want to just put that box around the entire scene ;) !

    • Official Post

    Thanks for the reply Demian


    Top is original, bottom is current. The gold facade you see reflected in the top image is contained within the view frustum (I have cropped the image for confidentiality reasons) in both scenes, yet now only appears in the older file. They pop in and out of reflections as you move around the scene. They are fairly simple geometry - perhaps 20 faces per panel? But quite large, they space inter-floor so are around 3 metres tall each.

    I'm afraid you may have to play around with the scene a bit, in other words try section planes for example to cut out what you don't need of the scene, anything which may not be directly visible during that certain perspective for example. That may at least provide you with more faithful reflections then, if the main cause as to why only a part is displayed is caused by the overall scene complexity.

  • I've encounter this but not from a geometry stand point. General from lighting, material, or engine updates.

    • Did you change the material properties for the glass?
    • It's super hard to tell what the sun's direction is in either shot. Kind look right to left for the bottom is that the same for the top.
    • Were both renders done in the same version of Enscape - 3.0.2?
  • I'm afraid you may have to play around with the scene a bit, in other words try section planes for example to cut out what you don't need of the scene, anything which may not be directly visible during that certain perspective for example. That may at least provide you with more faithful reflections then, if the main cause as to why only a part is displayed is caused by the overall scene complexity.

    Tried deleting large swathes of geometry, to no avail. Thanks for replying regardless.

  • I'm afraid you may have to play around with the scene a bit, in other words try section planes for example to cut out what you don't need of the scene, anything which may not be directly visible during that certain perspective for example. That may at least provide you with more faithful reflections then, if the main cause as to why only a part is displayed is caused by the overall scene complexity.

    One more question - does hardware make any difference here? eg; will my 3090 equipped machine deal with this problem better than a workstation laptop? Or is this bottleneck hardcoded at the Enscape end?

  • I've encounter this but not from a geometry stand point. General from lighting, material, or engine updates.

    • Did you change the material properties for the glass?
    • It's super hard to tell what the sun's direction is in either shot. Kind look right to left for the bottom is that the same for the top.
    • Were both renders done in the same version of Enscape - 3.0.2?

    Everything the same in both versions

  • Everything the same in both versions

    hmm odd.

    So if you open both files and run the renders you will get the exact same results shown?

    One more question - does hardware make any difference here? eg; will my 3090 equipped machine deal with this problem better than a workstation laptop? Or is this bottleneck hardcoded at the Enscape end?

    What GPU did you use for the first render?

    I personally don't think hardware at this level is the issue. I recently install an RTX 3090 from an RTX 2080 and have gone back to renders from a year ago and produced the same exact result with some lighting improvement.


    Hmm - Maybe check your normals - is this revit or SketchUp? Be sure the faces are pointed in the correct direction.


    Otherwise, can you share the part of the model shown in the render, while removing any content that keeps the project non-confidential?