Edgar,

ednumber0 - 04 June 2008 02:03 PM

I got it to work but i dont understand why would you use a Sky Map reflection?

If you use 100% black text there is no color and no luminance so, no reflection. In this case, RT reflection will use the background color or the Reflection Sky map to show the reflection. I guess this is where it picks up the “light” to show it.

Your map looks very sharp, what is the trick here mine looks like the premultiply is bothering some how. I do not know could possibly be wrong.

Your bands and text are probably on a white background. You see the antialiasing…
My bands and text are in Alpha only, it cuts out in the color mass. I also use Adaptive antialiasing in EI (150-200)

...what about if you want to use another Sky Map for another reflection if needed one, how do you control which sky map to affect the objects reflection if you have multiple Sky Reflection Maps?

I don’t get that one. Why use multiples Sky maps? The reflection Sky map is the image RT will use when nothing else is there. In the teapots image, the top and left one have a different local group Reflection map; the right one has none so RT uses the Reflection Sky map. For me, this image does not make sense.

Hi, Richard, Edgar

About multiply reflection maps. Actually (EI 7.0.x):

- only one (first enabled) RT reflection map is used. Same for RT refraction and GI Sky maps. Procedurals cannot be used as such maps.

- in group’s Material reflection (and in world’s Global Reflections) you can have any number of maps that are combined additively (so typically it’s not a fatal prob to use 1 map instead of 2 or more). You can add procedurals but they will be used as reflectivity (like “reflection bias") not as reflections

All these limitations are eliminated in EI8

Very useful info here. Thanks Richard and Igors.

Richard,
Just to be clear (and more wordy), RT reflections work just as you would expect in the real world, including reflecting black.  The problem is a default EI stage is not the real world, as it is black by default.  Reflections are additive, meaning reflection brightness (including hue) is added to the reflective surface.  Black adds nothing to the reflection. If your environment is black as well (default) then it reflects black, also adding nothing.  The reason you need an environment is to counter the nothing   So adding a 90% black (10% white) background, is the same as adding 10% white to the reflection, thereby revealing the 100% black text in the reflection.

If your text were 90% black, and the sky map as well, the text will appear to not reflect again.  Having an environmental map which is a gradient is usually best as it ensures the numbers can not always cancel each other out.

The way you light the object will also effect this, and essentially as long as the value of the reflected object does not equal the value of the environment, you will see the reflected object.

Yon

Yon, you’re the man!
Before hanging in these forums, I solved my problems with trials and errors. Very often I know what to do or at least part of it but I don’t know why the trick works… Reading your explanation is like someone just turned the light on in the room… Thanks.

Rick,
I have the same experience.  I try and fail, and when I ask there’s someone there who has worked it out.  It sure beats the trying and failing
There’s also a very health exchange of how to approach problems when they are posted.  So I do my best to stay involved in that.  There’s a lot to learn, and a lot of different ways to get similar results.

You’ve helped me out several times as well, thanks.  Congratulations on the iPod, FX champ!  Just don’t ‘tune in and drop out’.

Yon

PS I’m not sure if this is true in EI, but here are two pieces of light trivia.  You can’t see light (just what it bounces off of) and you can’t see through darkness.  Maybe it does apply.