How do I do this? (remove object from GI calc)

[Pongo]

OK,... I have a scene with a spherical sky that is a mesh surrounding things. In the object properties I have turned off cast and receive GI effects, but the sky object still blocks the light from my environment.

If I hide the sky mesh things are the way I want,... I'm simply using GI to get an overall ambient lighting to my scene, and calculating this with the sky mesh simply takes too long and is unneeded.

So,... is there a way to make the mesh not be seen at all in the GI calculations? I know I can hide the sky, compute the irradience map, then unhide the sky, but this is an animation and that will not work well.

Hope this makes sense.

anyone?

[RErender]

Nope, you either need to calc the imap with the sky hidden like you said or use your sky map in the Max environment .

[DP]

try selecting the sky and turning it off from "cast shadows" & "recieve shadows" and possibly "visible to reflections/refractions"

but i havent, to this day, found way of getting something to be reflected but not included in GI calcs