Add 'Microroughness' to Cycles Glossy Node
We all know about the Fresnel term for glossy materials whereby the reflection intensity increases at glancing angles.
There is a less well known phenomenon that occurs on semi glossy or even matte surfaces whereby reflection 'sharpness' also increases at glancing angles - in some cases becoming almost mirror like at very shallow viewing angles.
A while back I created a node group (with input from some other users over at Blenderartists) to simulate this effect and it gives great results however some render engines already include a 'microroughness' control in their glossy materials (e.g. Thea), it would be nice of Cycles had something similar out of the box.
2 Comments
Agreed! A side-by-side image of the effect with a comparison to Blender's current shader may help this proposal gain even more traction ;)
Glossy shader is «atomic» shader. Is should be as simple as it can be. Such setting can exist with something complex like Glass shader or Plastic shader (do not exist ATM). Making own nodes and using node template addon is a proper way to have various nodegroups «out of the box» for each file.