[John Krikawa]

Hello. I read the manual regarding the reflection channel and it indicates the channel is useful for compositing. How so? Could I use it in photoshop for something useful, or is it for compositing in other, niche software?
Regards,
John

[Nasok]

Hey John.
Reflection channel (or rather Pass) might be useful for, especially if you assemble everything by passes. The way reflection channel works in Maxwell is that it shows you only what and how is reflected in the model. So it is heavily affected by roughness and bump, of course.

How it can be useful, well, in many cases this pass is heavily used for de-bugging. Like when you tweaking your model you want to see only the reflections or only the albedo, or only the roughness values and so on. Useful for better understanding how your environment + bump + roughness working out together and whether you need to adjust and how.

For compositing, it is necessary when you doing multi-pass compositing. So for instance you render everything separately (ideally in 32 float) and then you assemble everything in your post production app (i.e. photoshop, nuke, after effects, etc.). Multi-pass workflow gives you precise control over how your passes are blended. You have independent control over albedo, spec, reflections, ids, roughness, depth and etc.

Practically, you've rendered your object and want to reduce the reflectivity a bit, or increase. or maybe tint for better blending with environment - that's that pass you'll go to.

Honestly in Maxwell it is not the most useful pass (after you've hit render button) since the plan is that you will let Maxwell do it's one of a kind magic to blend everything together. It would be useful for FIRE engine to have this different passes on and off during live sessions so that it would be easier to identify whether you would need to adjust something or not.

Hope it helps,
Tim.