Creates physically based reflections using a world normal pass, a camera and an HDRI as inputs. includes variable roughness, diffuse contribution, thin film interference and more.
Optical Reflection
First submitted: 15 January 2026
Updated: 18 January 2026
Author: Jorrit Schulte
Compatible Nuke versions: 14.0 or later
Compatibility: Linux, Mac, Windows
Creates physically based reflections using a world normal pass, a camera and an HDRI as inputs.
Like a raytracer, OpticalReflection essentially shoots a ray from the cameras perspective and reflects that ray with a single bounce using the normal pass. It then samples pixels from the HDRI projected on an infinitely large sphere, much like an environment light. Because it is physically based, it produces accurate Fresnel effects based on set material properties.
I've used this tool in production to add reflections characters glasses for faster art direction than lighting would be able to, to add detail to glass or metallic surfaces, even to paint out cameras visible in reflections. a practical example of where this tool is very useful is to add some life to characters eyes when they come out a bit too dull in lighting.
Preset Materials
Optical Reflections comes with a number of preset dielectric and metallic materials.
Variable Roughness
The one feature that does not properly conserve energy is the roughness attribute instead it uses a physically plausible latlong blur that keeps things fast for real world production environments.
you can adjust the roughness of a material globally, or use an input for variable roughness
Thin-film interference
A feature that is a lot of fun to play with - OpticalReflection supports thin film interference, creating interference patterns e.g. the type you would see from a thin layer of oil floating on water
Watch Demo Here
Credits
Thanks to Adrian Pueyo for DummyCam used internally
https://www.nukepedia.com/tools/gizmos/3d/dummycam/
Dog character
https://studio.blender.org/characters/autumn/v1/
HDRIs
https://polyhaven.com/hdris
or register to download or rate.
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