Reflections in Fusion?

For this scene:

Cam 7 HDR Fusion_0130.jpg (374.6 KiB) Viewed 465 times

I had to render the ship and the nebula in separate Blender projects because the nebula is rendered in Eevee (it's from an add-on that can be rendered in Cycles but would take forever), and the ship in Cycles. The obvious problem with that is that the ship is not reflecting the nebula, which it should.

The nebula in this case is a composite of two different nebulas rendered at the same resolution than the ship, 2048x858. So to set a plane or a half sphere and project the nebula onto it is a lot of work and time.

So I was wondering if there was a way to composite this that would show, on the surface of the ship, the reflection of the nebula, even if it's not perfect. Can anything like that be done in Fusion?

Maybe you could refer to Hendrik's reply from the other thread:

Render your eevee pass with the whole spaceship turned black and shiny (do a material override), then combine the two elements together. Maybe plussing them looks ok, maybe you need to twiddle it differently (create alpha from nebulas color channels and over etc), but rendering the spaceship black gives you the nebula with spaceship holdout.

In this case the first thing I'd try is to enable surface normals pass in cycles and use that to create fake environment reflections from the nebula pass in Fu. You might want to render a 360 spherical panoramic image of the nebula to get full env sphere coverage but could also fake by stretching the camera-view render, maybe looks ok too.

If you have separate textures apply HDRI map + Sphere map to reflect tool or use new dome light tool. Should be enough.


A test I made with the same process using video of a candle flame and I attached a point light to the same location for extra light source.

Or just using one sphere for scene and add tha that as texture with reflect tool on a "ship".

It all an illusion anyone, you just need to find ways to make believable illusions budget friendly and not too hard to make.

...you could also use spherical camera from the point of view of the ship and render out that as a pass. and apply as reflect material on the hull of the ship if you wanted the ship to reflect specially nebula around it , but you will need to build a 360 closed up scene so the camera doesn't show "behind the curtain" gaps in your set design.

Maybe you could refer to Hendrik's reply from the other thread:

Render your eevee pass with the whole spaceship turned black and shiny (do a material override), then combine the two elements together. Maybe plussing them looks ok, maybe you need to twiddle it differently (create alpha from nebulas color channels and over etc), but rendering the spaceship black gives you the nebula with spaceship holdout.

I'm not sure. He's talking about a holdout by rendering the ship completely black, but I'm not certain that I understand exactly what he means. That said, I don't think that would give me any type of reflection.

In this case the first thing I'd try is to enable surface normals pass in cycles and use that to create fake environment reflections from the nebula pass in Fu. You might want to render a 360 spherical panoramic image of the nebula to get full env sphere coverage but could also fake by stretching the camera-view render, maybe looks ok too.

Thanks, I don't fully understand because I'm not a Fusion expert, but I'll have to look up on all of that and give it a try.

If you have separate textures apply HDRI map + Sphere map to reflect tool or use new dome light tool. Should be enough.


A test I made with the same process using video of a candle flame and I attached a point light to the same location for extra light source.

Or just using one sphere for scene and add tha that as texture with reflect tool on a "ship".

It all an illusion anyone, you just need to find ways to make believable illusions budget friendly and not too hard to make.

...you could also use spherical camera from the point of view of the ship and render out that as a pass. and apply as reflect material on the hull of the ship if you wanted the ship to reflect specially nebula around it , but you will need to build a 360 closed up scene so the camera doesn't show "behind the curtain" gaps in your set design.

That looks awesome. Thanks for the tips, just as with Hendrik's post, a little over my head, so I'll have to do some googling and see exactly what you mean.