Show in Contents
Add to Favorites
Home: Autodesk Maya Online Help
Simulated reflections
Reflection and Environment
Simulate reflections with Env Ball
Create true reflections
For more information about true reflections,
see
True reflections.
NoteTo create true (photorealistic) reflections,
you must raytrace the scene, a process which can take a significant
amount of time. For more information about raytracing, see
Depth map and raytraced shadows in
the
Lighting guide.
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)
- Create
a sphere and a plane, and position the sphere over the plane. Create
a light to illuminate both surfaces.
- Create
a specular material (a Phong or PhongE)
and assign it to the sphere. The sphere is reflected in the plane.
- Create
a second material and assign it to the plane. The plane reflects
the sphere.
- Make
each surface a different color so you can see the reflection of
one in the other.
- 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.
- 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.