Andrew Coppin wrote:

>How do you make something *look* reflective? How do you make something
>*look* transparent?
>
>Of course, making something reflective is easy - just add the appropreate
>block to the texture statement. But that doesn't necessarily make the object
>*look* reflective... For example, take a shiny white sphere, and add a
>reflection statement. Since there is nothing else in the scene, the
>resulting image is identical. The sphere IS reflective, but still doesn't
>LOOK reflective. Ditto for refraction.
>

Well, as you said, a lot of it depends on whats in the scene. But what I
often do when I'm testing a scene so not all the objects are there yet, or
when I don't want a slooow reflection making my test render needlessly
long, is give it a low reflection value and a high specular value. This
shows off contours and highlights, gives me some idea of how reflection and
lighting are playing with the surface, but renders quickly and looks
acceptable. (Sometimes good enough that I forget to change it in the
final...)

RG - if Microsoft had invented senility, it wouldn't be a problem, it would
be a feature

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