For more information about true reflections, see True reflections.

You must have at least two surfaces to create true reflections (or a surface that somehow curves around so one part of its surface can reflect onto another part of its surface).

You can control which surfaces appear in reflections and which don’t by turning Visible in Reflections on or off in each surface’s Attribute Editor. (Visible in Reflections is on by default when you create new surfaces.)

To create true reflections (example)

1. Create a sphere and a plane, and position the sphere over the plane. Create a light to illuminate both surfaces.
2. Create a specular material (a Phong or PhongE) and assign it to the sphere. The sphere is reflected in the plane.
3. Create a second material and assign it to the plane. The plane reflects the sphere.
4. Make each surface a different color so you can see the reflection of one in the other.
5. In the Raytracing Quality section of the Render Settings window, turn on Raytracing.

   This tells Maya to raytrace any surface whose Visible in Reflections/Refractions is toggled on. These attributes are on by default for all surfaces, but raytracing only works when you turn on Raytracing in the Render Settings window.

   To learn more about the Render Settings, see Render Settings window in the Rendering guide.

6. Perform a test render to visualize the results. If you want the sphere to reflect the plane, open the plane’s Attribute Editor and turn on Render Stats > Visible in Reflections.

   To test iterations of a scene, see Visualize interactively with IPR in the Rendering guide.