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I'm pretty new to this and this is my first question here, any help would be greatly appreciated.

So basically what I want to achieve is a floor material as seen in this photo...

enter image description here

...the reflections are very crisp but dim.

With a glossy shader I get the following results:

enter image description here

First picture: reflections are blurry

Second picture: roughness of the material looks right but reflection is bright red

Third picture: If tinted in any other color than white, it seems to produce the result I want. Reflection is sharp and gets tinted blue. What I need is the reflection to be tinted white.

Thanks for any help.

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4 Answers 4

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The key is to mix a glossy shader with a diffuse.

enter image description here

The lower the fac on the mix shader the more of the first input (in this case more glossiness). For more realism, you can feed fresnel values to the fac input, or you can mix it with non-glossy parts with this (i.e. if you are making puddles).

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  • $\begingroup$ Thanks so much! I knew I was missing something simple. Looks like I wanted it. $\endgroup$
    – user1163818
    Commented Sep 7, 2016 at 16:59
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    $\begingroup$ If you feed fresnel values like you suggest you will have to invert them or switch the shaders in the mix node. $\endgroup$
    – Jaroslav Jerryno Novotny
    Commented Sep 7, 2016 at 20:48
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The floor is actually more reflective near the horizon. This effect is called Fresnel and it adds a lot of realism into the scene.

Your shader should look like this:

enter image description here

Instead of controlling the amount of reflection with the Mix Shader Fac input, you control the amount with the value of color of the Glossy node. Black will be no reflection.

As the roughness is 0, this is a PBR dielectric shader. If the roughness would be more than 0, the Fresnel node would have to be upgraded to account for the roughness.

To keep it physically correct, keep the color of the Glossy node white. You adjust the color of the floor with the Diffuse shader.

Here is a comparison between this setup with Fresnel (left) and not physically correct setup with just mixed diffuse and glossy (right):

enter image description here

The right ball should feel un-natural.

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  • $\begingroup$ Nice answer Jerryno! I am so excited about Blender's PBR rendering possibilities right now. I think we'll need to add a new PBR tag here in Blender Stack. $\endgroup$
    – Paul Gonet
    Commented Sep 7, 2016 at 19:09
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    $\begingroup$ +1 I had to join this exchange just to upvote this answer, I never knew blender had this much flexibility built in. $\endgroup$
    – KalleMP
    Commented Sep 7, 2016 at 21:33
  • $\begingroup$ Nice answer, however, a link, or instructions, on how to adjust the Fresnel node to be more accurate based on roughness would be nice. $\endgroup$
    – GiantCowFilms
    Commented Oct 2, 2016 at 17:05
  • $\begingroup$ @GiantCowFilms True, I should link it back with this answer: blender.stackexchange.com/a/63779/7777 (it's only linked from there here) as it contains the rough fresnel $\endgroup$
    – Jaroslav Jerryno Novotny
    Commented Oct 2, 2016 at 18:22
  • $\begingroup$ This should be marked as the best answer. $\endgroup$
    – HF_
    Commented Feb 26, 2020 at 14:47
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To get a more realistic material, add distorted noise to the displacement node. You will get a very similar surface to the one in the photo.

Node example

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Try to mix glossy shader with diffuse shader. Both white. It makes kind of a ceramic texture. Use the mix shader for this. Play with the mix value and the roughness value of the glossy shader to achieve the look you want.

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