is shellac best for this?

V-Ray V-Ray for 3ds Max General
1

I want a material to reflect, but I want it to have a reflection map in it is well.

I basically want the reflection on top of the “fake” reflection map.

So what I have is a standard material with the reflection map, then a vray material, black, with the reflections.

Then i turn the shellac to 100 percent and it shows up perfectly how I want it.

Is there a more efficient (as far as rendering speed goes) way of creating essentialy the same thing?

I have a bunch of handles that I won’t be getting close to with “fake chrome” on them. I want the same material, but with some “real” reflections, on the sink of the same scene. That’s why I did it that way. Then I instanced the standard material chrom into the shellac so the materials always appear similar even if I change the other.

2

You might be able to get the same effect using the blend material as well. But I doubt its going to use less resources than a shellac material. I think Vray has to trace each material in the blend or shellac, essentially doubling the render time of a regular vray material.

I guess the question is do you really need to do this? In a vray material you can specify an environment, i.e. reflection map, and also be reflecting any physical objects “seen” by the reflective geometry. I usually use shellac and/or blend for materials that need complex reflections like automotive paint that needs crisp and glossy reflections simultaneously.