Odd reflections

[tbny]

I am not sure if this is a vray-related problem or a Max-prob. Either way there might be someone that could give me any direction of how to solve it.
I have been modeling a twisting glass tower. I started in autocad and the facade is made of individual 20mm thick glass panes (acad solids).
I built up the tower as a regular 90 deg tower and imported to Max where I used the "twist" modifier to create a 45 deg twist.
When I render in Max I get very odd stepping reflections (the same happens if I use max-geometry as panes). I have tried to smooth the geometry in max but have not got any good results.

Here are some screen-shots from Acad, Max and a rendered image.
(images with black background is the un-twisted geometry in acad)

http://www.bcdh.com/levelone/twist_issues.html

Any help would be fantastic

tbny

[studioDIM]

They seem correct to me.
The issue is that the reflections are calculated based on the polygon normal.
In your case the glasses are, individually, FLAT pieces of geometry (ie, the triangles lie on the same plane, their normals point in the exact same direction, per panel).
Unless your panels are made up of CURVED triangles (an oxymoron. what i mean is that they are made up of many small triangles each pointing in a slightly different direction), your reflections will look exactly like they are now.
A workaround is to meshsmooth (not smooth the normals, but generate more triangles - or quads- per panel) the individual panels.
That would represent a curved glass, in the case, not a flat panel positioned in a "curved" manner.

Hope i understood what you meant

Lele

[tbny]

Thanks for the reply Lele

That seems to make sense.
What would be the best way to apply the mesh-smooth to the geometry
to get slightly curving glass (i.e. leading to a smooth reflection across the side of the building)?

Cheers

Tbny