HawkPoint3D Posted May 3, 2011 Share Posted May 3, 2011 Ok, I am curious what method you guys use to rig up exterior renderings so that you get good believable Environment reflections in your building glass when using MRay with MAX2012? I have mapped photos to cylinders before but it really has not given me the nicest solution. I will take any advice I can! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cain Posted November 4, 2011 Share Posted November 4, 2011 No one yet? I would also like some advice on this. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
xEndlessxUrbiax Posted November 4, 2011 Share Posted November 4, 2011 I have had some decent results from HDRI skies. I don't have max in front of me and haven't done this in a while but I might be able to point you in the right direction. There are some tutorials on how to do this online, but few of them deal with mental ray, most are for vray. I used mental ray so I can try and help. You have to first get an hdri sky map, which you can download online. The scene will be lit from a skydome light, no sun. Create a material with your hdri map as the bitmap and make sure its surface mapping is set to spherical. Under your skydome parameters, drag the material you made of the sky onto the option that asks how you want this illuminated (once again, sorry I dont have max in front of me). If all goes well, your skydome light should be emitting light according to your hdri map. Now, I don't know how well this works for creating reflections. Another thing I have tried is creating a gigantic sphere around the scene and applying the hdri map to the inside faces. I never really got this to work well from a lighting standpoint. Another problem is most hdri maps seem to be semi-spherical, and I cant find an option in max materials to apply a semi-spherical map to an object, just spherical... would love to know if anyone has an answer to this. Sorry this probably wasn't much help and didn't really address the question but it might be worth a try messing around with these options. I also would like to hear a good answer, besides using photoshop to "fake in" reflections. Peace Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
xEndlessxUrbiax Posted November 4, 2011 Share Posted November 4, 2011 The comment thread on this page deals with hdri maps and lighting. Can the reflections come from the same source? http://www.peterguthrie.net/blog/2011/07/hdri-skies-faq/ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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