UE4 Reflection Captures - How-to Use

In this video we cover how to place & use reflection captures in Unreal Engine 4.
00:00 - Intro
00:16 - Which reflection capture to use?
02:56 - Planar Reflections
04:03 - Box Reflections
06:48 - Project Reflection Capture Size Setting
08:52 - Sphere Reflection Captures
10:36 - When & Where to place Reflection Captures
14:10 - Placement Recap & Summary
16:12 - Precision Reflection Captures
19:22 - Final Settings & Recap
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[@xxphantom93xx61]

Thank you man, you are the perfect example of person that can really teach something to other people!

[@dylanroemmele906]

These videos are top-notch content. Keep it up!

[@aleksandratraczyk8440]

Nice to have you back! Great explanation, looking forward to see next videos :)

[@TorQueMoD]

This is such a great technical overview of the reflection captures. I had no idea really how they worked, so I always just dropped a bunch in with the default settings at eye level. That's about the only thing I knew before watching this video :) Also, the capture offset could be really helpful if you want to ensure that it's exactly the player's height at all times when the ground level isn't always the same. Drop them on the floor and then just set the offset to 168 and then you don't have to worry about tweaking them on stairs or ramps etc.

[@frankie3351]

killin it Ryan! I've learned a lot from your videos dude thank you

[@fhajji]

Thank you Ryan. Finally understanding what Reflection Captures _actually_ do! Much appreciated.

[@SerafinGrivel]

Thank you so much! This was so helpful for me as a beginner

[@georges8408]

Best teacher ever... Thank you so much!

[@michaelmonte3239]

Thanks a lot, my friends! You have helped a lot.

[@warampanpengya3644]

Thank you I really learned a lot from this !!!

[@RomasNoreika]

Thanks a lot Ryan - very good explanation ;)

[@danielrugu]

excellent explanation and content thank you.

[@kazbu3162]

Very useful! Thanks!

[@thepreecher8755]

great tutorial greatly presented...thanks

[@kyriakosgerostathis423]

thanks for the video

[@RaviTomar__]

U r awesome dude!! 👌

[@shutnawi6635]

you speak like a million bucks, who are you??? you have a certain type of charisma on you like you've been in the business for 40 years. great explanation, thank you.

[@pranildeshmukh7209]

You are life saver Ryan. Quality content❤️👏. Keep up the work man..

[@lebenin3604]

Thank you. Really appreciated. #UnrealEngine

[@MrDyzi0]

Heey, you're back!

[@ThatRyanManning]

2021's been a challenge :)

[@findyhutasoit5015]

Thank you Ryan. Great tutorial!!! Just wondering if you or anyone else has an idea why the reflections of two chrome spheres which are facing each other are showing up in my scene opaque? One would expect that inside the reflection of one of the spheres you could see a sphere which is reflecting the environment and not an opaque sphere. Any help or suggestions to fix this would be greatly appreciated!!!!!

[@egey.]

Hello, thank you for the tutorial and i hope its not a silly question but how did you split your viewport to 3 parts and how 2 perspective windows can be independent? Thank you

[@ThatRyanManning]

Not a silly question! Click the upper right square in your viewport to access the 4 panes. You can also click the upper left drop down in your viewport and under layouts, select other configurations.

[@jonusiak5123]

Awesome! May I ask, how would you use the lit>Reflections mode efficiently? Is that just to show you which objects have reflected surfaces? I always wonder since even Matte surfaces show the same reflection strength, if that makes sense? Thank you! Great stuff!!

[@ThatRyanManning]

Honestly...I rarelyt ever use that debug mode. It just makes everything shiny, so not a lot of useful information TBH.

[@jonusiak5123]

@@ThatRyanManning awesome..good to know! Very very useful info! Subscribed a few weeks ago since a coworker of mine recommend you for lighting! I did comment in another video you made a while ago. Was curious if you could at some point make a demo explaining uses of various nodes and why you would use them. Such as multiply, divide, add, lerps and much of the common nodes. (As a teacher of 3d art myself) I even get confused sometimes of which to use when. Sometimes I scratch my head because I hooked up something incorrectly.

[@ThatRyanManning]

You may want to check out Matthew Wadstein's channel. He has a WTF series that breaks down all the nodes individually: kzbin.info/door/OVfF7PfLbRdVEm0hONTrNQ

[@SaynYT]

Usually I've been using screen space reflexions but I've wanted to try out something different. The problem is,sphere reflexions or cube reflexions don't seem to work properly. In the video you drag a sphere reflexion into the scene,build it and boom you have nice reflexions in the scene. If I do that I can barely notice the reflexions,everything has a really dark blue tone and the only way to notice the reflexions is to look very very closely. Any idea on what I'm doing wrong?

[@stevenbennis5289]

I love how he just pops in a reflection capture and it immediately starts projecting onto glass... meanwhile that doesn't help my problem, which is that even though it's in the scene, nothing happens, even after building the reflection captures. I always have to resort to Specified cubemap which is not a good solution for all situations...

[@ongakuwo]

Thank you! I have a little question. Im using right now a sphere ref cap onj a sphere, i added a material that has metallic but also opacity and refraction, whenever the sphere ref cap is in my scene close to my sphere the material looks soo dark as if the sphere is giving shadow, but the opacity is visible. Is this one of those exception where you dont use ref capture?

[@ThatRyanManning]

Would have to see more to understand, but sounds like your reflection capture is capturing dark areas and reprojecting it back on your materials.

[@acsomiT]

Great pedagocical video. You should be a teacher!

[@louisec6431]

- If you're using raytracing, you don't need to use refection captures - Reflection Captures are good for performance improvement - Reflection Captures could be overlapped, you can put the reflection capture at a specific place that you want to have an accurate reflection result

[@octaviosilva5808]

One question Ryan : (17:21)What if i use box reflection capture. Will it fix that optical distortion effect?

[@ThatRyanManning]

That it would! :)

[@Chilliey]

Hi Ryan, so would it then be correct to say that with ray tracing on, I wouldn't need these reflection capturing in my scene then?

[@ThatRyanManning]

Yes. This is technically true if you're purely using Raytracing.

[@Chilliey]

@@ThatRyanManning I see, thanks for clarifying!

[@emarinm1]

Hello. And why not just allow the crystal to have its natural properties? Cheers

[@brunoe5663]

After investigating on why my reflection capture actors had absolutely no effect on reflections (placing and moving them around) I found that ,in order to have reflections capture actors working you have to place a BP_Sky_Sphere in your scene. Also, it doesn't seem to work if you placed an HDRI with the plugin "HDRI backdrop" .

[@ThatRyanManning]

This isn't correct. Neither of those are required to make reflection captures work. Did you rebuild your reflection captures after placing them?

[@DavesChaoticBrain]

Great info, thanks! Except, the results are extremely wrong. Even in the original project reflections are all wrong. Is it supposed to be possible to make even relatively accurate reflections, or to just reflect *something* and hope the player doesn't look too closely?

[@user-vj7bh5rn8h]

hi，I hve a problem,when I click play , all reflection disappeared

[@enigmaticcat7915]

Hi! I don't know if you'll see this comment, but I was wondering why my reflection capture is turning up pitch dark despite having a fully lit scene? This is after building. Thanks! :)

[@ThatRyanManning]

Try rebuilding your reflection captures.

[@curtisnewton895]

why not attach the capture to the character ?

[@ThatRyanManning]

Reflection Captures don't update in real time by default.

[@dracullbo]

Why not just leave the box reflexion captures? They seem more accurate in this scene.

[@ThatRyanManning]

Absolutely use a box capture! Box Captures and Sphere captures have similar settings. Since sphere reflection captures are the most common, I chose to focus in on placing sphere reflection captures as opposed to Box Captures so you would have the principles of using them. But in this situation, since the subway walls are mostly straight...go for a Box Capture.

[@f41514]

Important Step : Turn off the Forward Shading from Project setting/Redering.

[@ThatRyanManning]

FYI. Bad advice. Forward shading is used in certain situations but using it will disable several rendering passes from Deferred Shading and should only be used when necessary.

[@f41514]

​@@ThatRyanManning This demo is turn off the Forward Shading, I was followed your video step by step but RC still not working until I disable the Forward Shading it work. I'm not sure why.

[@ThatRyanManning]

@@f41514 I gotcha. Forward shading is advised when using planar reflections, but in general Deferred Rending produces the best visuals.

[@AaronZhai]

up

[@schmoborama]

Noooooo you don't place the captures at the character's view height. It only worked here b/c it's the same as the window's height, which is what you really want. If you want a window to reflect what it "sees", then you have to put the capture *right at the window*. Then the parallaxing of the bench reflection will disappear, and you won't get those inaccurate distortions. Imagine if the character leans on the window sill looking out - the reflection would have the back of his head in it. This is probably old-school game production where you couldn't use as many as you wanted.

[@2010Edgars]

Not work.

[@ThatRyanManning]

How not work?

[@ArcaneTurbulence]

Pretend for a minute that we don't know anything about RC's and start there... That's the case for many of us.... In other words.. Explain what it is, in plain ENGLISH at the start.

[@ThatRyanManning]

1:15 this is exactly where I explain reflection captures. For my own knowledge, was the explanation not clear enough for you? What are you not getting that I can help further explain?

[@ArcaneTurbulence]

@@ThatRyanManning Sorry, let me break it down. Your video is the very first source of information that popped up when I googled the node. While you're technically correct in everything you say, it's not that descriptive when you're completely new. For instance, "screen space reflection" You'd think that (what it is) would be inferred by the name... However it's not. A 'to the point' description would be something like: "A reflection capture, is a point of lit space that will be reflected onto a mirror-like surface.". start at 1:08 and listen to what you say. lol ... When you're brand new, "screen space reflection" sounds like it should be something that has to do with the screen. Some kind of ambient effect, etc. That was my very first impression. With that impression, I was lost during your initial explanation. I didn't actually begin to understand what it is until 1:50.. I dunno, Maybe I'm just stupid, or over-complicating unreal.. I've been cramming this stuff nonstop for 14 hours now..... Just ignore me, I need sleep.. lol

[@ThatRyanManning]

@@ArcaneTurbulence thanks for the insight. It's always a trade off trying to be thorough but not overly explanatory.

[@ArcaneTurbulence]

@@ThatRyanManning No problem. Sorry If I came off prickly. It's rough when your just scratching the surface. lol