DS question on reflections (Solved)

SpyroRue

I am wondering if there is a way in DS to render with an environment sphere to give reflection on the surfaces of a model without the environment sphere itself being rendered. I am not a fan of the mapped reflection in the surfaces of items, and much prefer raytrace which is even across the scene and not bound to the UV templates/tiling of the many surfaces.

For an example: A character wearing a reflective outfit that is reflecting the surface of the environment sphere, but the render of the character is intended to be a cut out PNG with no background, for layering purposes.

Scott Livingston

I haven't tried that specifically, but I think the way to do it would be to set the sphere to the UberSurface shader, and turn Fantom on (on the surfaces pane).

Edited to add: yes, seems to work as long as the environment sphere also has Raytrace turned on, and Visible in Render turned on.

In the attached image, the visible sphere is a primitive with raytraced reflections. The environment sphere is invisible due to the Fantom setting. I used the Kitchen HDR image for UE2.

SpyroRue

Ah perfect! Thanks very much Scott! Gotta love Ubersurface, this will be so useful too me :cheese: Ive got a render underway and certainly could use this