[Steven Houtzager]

Technical question. Why does putting the IOR at 20 or more recommended to make the reflections in metal look brighter when the definition of refraction is: the change in direction of a propagating wave (light or sound) when passing from one medium to another.

Where is the refracting and why a number and not an angle?

SH

[zdeno]

to get things harder to understand and make maxwell more profesional unbiased feeling.
There is so many factors to change reflected colors . refl0 refl90 Nd roughness. You have to be at least engineer to make convincing materials.

instead use two colors 0 and 90 and rest leave to falloff map You have buy spectometr and get through few years of study to get "there is something wrong in roughness model".

but seriously:

Nd in real life affects reflection too. It is not simple CG IOR approach. You have to search through the forum archive threads. It was mentioned few times. Find Thomas Anderson great thread.

[Steven Houtzager]

Thanks man. I do see that the word "index" in IOR means throwout the angle number and use an arbitrary number system.

S.Houtzager