Lately I’ve been using RT reflections everywhere, so now that I am trying to get back to using the “cheaper” mirror-type ones I find myself having some problems, surely due to my rustiness, but…

This is for a product presentation type scene: if I use a simple ground plane (say, an UberShape plane) and set a Mirror reflection with an Alignment=Top everything works OK and all objects on it get reflected fine.

The problem happens when I set up a more complex stage, such as a hemicylinder or a simple ground+wall with a rounded transition: these are objects that have height. Well: configuring the Mirror’s Alignment=Top won’t produce any reflection. The Mirror info window shows that the reflection “plane” is set at the stage object’s midheight. The thing is: the Position fields are uneditable (even in a case of Alignment=User) and the widgets in the 3D view seem ungrabbable. I first thought that perhaps Mirror reflections are more a matter of setting the vector (orientation) than the mirror plane’s position, but I’ve experimented with placing objects below and above this midheight and it happens to be critical: above midheight objetcs do get reflected, their reflection showing a size consistent with the distance between them and the mirror plane.

By the way: Environment reflection doesn’t seem to work at all!!!

So, am I forgetting some obvious smack-your-forehead basics here, or are there some bugs involved? My setup is EIAS 7.0.1 on an Intel-based Mac Pro running OS X 10.5.5.

(Having these problems with my moderately complex project, I’ve done tests with UberShapes such as planes and cubes reflecting a teapot, resulting in such strange issues)

Hello forum my old friend,
I’ve come to talk with you again,
‘cause my mirrors are not reflecting,
and there’s no way to do any editing
of the height
of the mirror’s reflecting plane
to solve this.
Please do advise…break silence.

Maybe start over with a new project...? It should work.
My setup is almost identical: EIAS 7.0.1 on an Intel-based Mac running OS X 10.5.6.

Do not use “Pure black” (0,0,0 HSV) on the ground plane for you will not get reflexion. 95% black will do (or any other color...)

This thread should interrest you:
http://www.eitechnologygroup.com/forums/viewthread/604/P15/

Sorry, surely I’ve explained myself unclearly: I do get that kind of simple plane setup to work OK. The problem comes when, instead of that plane, I use, say, an open cube or cylinder or any other shape with a certain volume and so some height: I can’t set the mirror plane’s height in that dialog to its lowest surfaces. The only way to work it seems to be to precut these so that I have sort of a simple plane again plus the rest of the shape, and that is a bit of a mess.

What I mean is: change that UberShape from a plane to, say, a cube (to simulate an enclosed stage. Invert normals if needed), open the Mirror Info window and try to set the mirror plane to the bottom of the cube with its reflecting vector looking upwards. There seems to be no way of doing that.

(possibly there never was :( )

(Thank you for that hint and link: I wasn’t aware of that issue )

Back from a trip in the other dimension…
I got reflexion from inside a cube… But not from all the objects… I don’t understand what is happening but changing the alingment in the configuration window of the mirror reflexion will affect where it appears. I think the angle of view also affect it as you can see in the movie… Anyway, I don’t get it but if anyone wants to play with the project and investigate further, here it is.
http://www.rdn.qc.ca/eias/mirrors.zip

I think what’s happening in your project is just the same that happens to mine (the only difference being things turned 90º, and your uncovering of an interesting feature of Mirror Reflections’ way of working).

Your Mirror Alignment=Middle setting is producing a reflection plane calculation that plays like a mirror bisecting the cube’s volume, as shown in the Mirror Info’s 3d preview as soon as one orbits the cube a bit. That green ball in the pic is just in front of the mirror reflection plane and gets reflected so; the yellow one is behind it, so it isn’t reflected.

The interesting bit is that, as soon as the camera gets behind the defined reflection plane, the Mirror starts working the other side too, and so it pops in the blue ball’s reflection and some other objects’ones dissapear. I always thought Mirror Reflections were one-sided only, but it seems that is relative to camera or something like that.

So if one could move this reflection plane to touch some of the cube’s sides, then one would get that side to reflect things in a logical manner. I just can’t remember if that was possible in previous versions of EIAS.

BUT: if I press the COMMAND (Apple) key and click and drag in the Mirror Info Window’s 3D preview, I can see that the XYZ Position fields’ values do change. So either there is a bug preventing me to edit these value fields or the bug is letting me do that CMD-Click’n’Drag move.

I just used your file Richard and set the rendering mode to raytrace instead of phong.

Regards
Stefan

Well. The idea is to be able to use time-cheap Phong-type planar reflections in specific regions of non completely planar objects. Say, get only the bottom of that cube to reflect correctly all these objects without having to break it into separate pieces. We need to be able to adjust the reflecting plane’s position.

We’d need the Igors or somebody else to tell us if that’s possible at all.