Screen Space Reflections (SSR) (DriveWorks Documentation)

Screen Space Reflections (SSR)

Screen Space Reflections or SSR is a camera effect that adds local reflections to a reflective surface. This effect can add further realism to a model making them more true to life. This affect can be enabled on the Default Camera or any Camera Entity in a 3D Document.

This camera effect is a screen space effect which means that only objects visible on screen can be reflected. Objects that are offscreen or obscured will not be reflected. This may result in some reflections not looking accurate.

The above example was generated in DriveWorks using Screen Space Reflections and Bloom. Both the floor and ceiling have been set as Reflective Appearances and SSR has been enabled on the Default Camera inside the 3D Document.

In the above example, we have entered high or strong values to illustrate the effect. In normal circumstances, you would use lower settings to apply a subtle effect.

Information Panel

With a Camera Entity selected, the following will be displayed in the Information Panel.

SSR Settings

Screen Space Reflections Enabled

Enable and disable SSR on the Default Camera. Disabling SSR means any Reflective render property won't be rendered correctly in the Default Camera. TRUE enables the effect, FALSE disables it.

Resolution

Resolution is the amount of samples SSR will take to create the reflection. This is represented as a percentage. 1 is the maximum number of samples and 0 is none so reflections will not be performed. Resolution can be thought of as the number of steps taken across the screen to sample and create a reflection.

Resolution effects performance, reducing the percentage of samples improves performance. However more samples will result in more accurate reflections.

Refinement

Once the Resolution has found a reflection, Refinement improves the accuracy of that reflection by performing samples around this area. The Refinement property controls the number of refinement samples performed. This is represented as a percentage. 1 is the maximum and 0 won't perform any refinement samples and therefore you won't receive any reflections.

Intensity

Intensity changes the intensity or strength of the reflections from all surfaces. It also changes the threshold of accepted reflective surfaces meaning more surfaces will become reflective.

Thickness

Reflection rays can travel behind objects. Thickness can be considered as the distance a ray travels behind an object. Thickness increases this distance and results in more rays being considered as reflections. A good value for this property is 10.

Falloff Sharpness

Screen Space Reflections is an approximation and can result in inaccurate or wrong reflections. This property determines the sharpness of these inaccurate reflections. It controls the gradient falloff of these reflections.

Scatter

Scatter is a global modifier that lets you increase or decrease the amount of SSR scatter. This is the pixelation that occurs when creating a reflective surface. This can be individually controlled on each Reflective property and globally modified from this property.

Blur Intensity

Blur Intensity controls how much blur is applied to the final reflections. It is worth noting that Appearances with high reflectivity will blur less.

Blur Passes

Blur Passes is the number of times the image is blurred. This has an impact on performance. A low number provides better performance than a high number.

Enabling Screen Space Reflections

By default, the Camera Entity will use the 3D Documents Default Camera settings. If SSR is enabled on the default camera then it will be enabled on the Camera Entity. Likewise, if SSR is disabled on the default camera, it will be disabled on the Camera Entity.

To enable SSR on a Camera Entity, follow the steps below:

Select the Node with the Camera Entity applied.
In the property panel or rules panel, set Override Default Camera Effects to be TRUE.
With this property set to TRUE, you can now enable SSR.
Set the property Screen Space Reflections Enabled to be TRUE.
Make sure you have at least one Appearance in your 3D Document set to use the Reflective render property.

Viewing Screen Space Reflections in a 3D Document

SSR will not be visible in a 3D Document while in edit mode. To preview the SSR Camera Effect, you must enter Preview Mode.

Preview Mode can be found on the Command Bar in a 3D Document.

Preview Mode will hide the 3D Document triads, hide wireframe selections, show Camera entities and enable any Camera effects.

DriveWorks Pro 22 Screen Space Reflections (SSR)