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.