HDRI Environment - how to exclude objects?

[cgzilla]

I am working on a project with a really tight schedule, in short, I'd like to disable HDRI reflections on the surface in this scene (see image provided). The teapot should reflect upon a clear white, reflective surface, is there a way to do this? I tried rendering in layers and putting image together in Photoshop but it doesn't feel realistic at all...

Help asap would be appreciated!!

[chadw]

If you are using vray.... take your hdri out of you environment tab and place it in a vray dome light. Then you can do your light linking as usual. Otherwise put a piece of geometry(a dome) in the scene that has the environment you want it to reflect mapped on it. So if you want white give that object a white shader. Max gives objects higher priority than maps so any geometry placed will take presidence at render time in the reflections. Make the dome not visible to camera and not cast shadows, but keep it visible to reflection, and that should do it for you