Subject: Re: Trouble with Silver
From: "Paul Davies" <[email-masked]>
To: [email-masked]
Date: Tue, 30 Aug 94 11:26:33 EDT

Hey JHILEM & Mark,
   The problem you are having with your silver objects is quite common when 
reflection images are used in place of traced reflections. As you may or may not
know a reflection image is basically an image mapped to the interior of a 
sphere. This sphere surrounds the object(s) and is used to determine which 
portions of the image will be seen on the reflective surface. The problem is 
that flat surfaces usually only "see" a very small portion of the reflection 
image, so there appears to be very little reflection occuring on that surface.

   A quick way to achieve more interesting reflections on a flat surface is to 
apply a bump map to it. This will cause LW to calculate varying surface normal 
angles across the surface allowing it to "see" more of the reflection image. 
Experiment with different amplitude values to achieve the effect you desire.

paul

Paul Davies
Artist/Animator
CapDisc
[email-masked]  or  uunet!capitol!davies