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

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?

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

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 :frowning: