hi all
I search for new ways to make the environment reflecting in glass, especially in windows from buildings.
I hate to make a real environment around my scene, because I loose skylight (brightness) on the walls…
What is your way to fake the reflection from environment?
please let me (us) know.
thanks in advance
themaxxer
I always render an extra mask for my windows (alpha image).
use this mask in photoshop to to place a real photo of an environment in it.
normaly a transparancie of 40 to 50% gives a nice reflection.
If anyone could find a way to change the default environment object, that would be one solution.
you mean without putting a sperical mapped image in the relfection/refraction override slot or using the environment override slot in the vray material?
smartass 
-dave
^^any way to modify the shape or size of that mysterious spherical object?
Well, I don’t know exactly what maxxer meant by loosing the skylight brightness, but I usually build a cylindrical object, no shadow, not visible to camera, and a 100 self illumination on a standard material with a panoramic photograph in the diffuse slot (hopefully site related if I have the pics).
Sorry if I’m just telling everybody what they all know…
why do you use a self illuminated sphere? that takes longer to render and gives worst results than if you just slapped that image into your environment slot and used the environment override to set the scene lighting.
I most of the time use the principle you describe, but sometimes it’s just easier for me to set a rotation to a cylinder in 3d than to rotate my mapping in the material editor. It’s just that sometimes you need an element of the background picture to reflect exactly in a certain position. Now, I know that I could just use the override max button to set a different picture than the one from the background, but I just feel it’s easier to mess with the uvw modifier or the object itself because you can guess the result from the viewport. It’s probably more time consumming for the computer, but less for me.