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3D Impressions Help - Reflections

With scene reflections you can specify the scene's virtual surrounds that can then be seen reflected in chosen object material surfaces. These surroundings can be considered as being a 6-sided virtual room that your scene is created within.

Setting Scene's Reflections

This is where you define the scene's virtual surroundings. To access them, use the 'Reflections' button on the 'Home' ribbon category, as shown below.

These settings are presented in the 2 parts of:

The image to be reflected.
Advanced settings affecting how this image is created and used.

Reflection Image

Here the following options are available:

Scene Background Color
This simply uses the color chosen as the scene's background color as the color for each of the 6 sides of the surrounding's virtual room. This results in reflective objects gaining this color. So a red object will look darker with black being reflected or look lighter for white.

	Both spheres are given then same material color of pure red and placed in a room reflecting the background color of black.
<	The left ball is 50% reflective and thus looks dark.
	The right ball is the original, non-reflective object.	>

Rainbow Room
This creates a room where each corner is given a different color and the walls merge between these colors. This can be best seen when reflected in a sphere.

This spherical object is 100% reflective, which shows the exact colors of the room.

Note that you can begin to see the shape of a square room being reflected.

Also as these are reflections, the green corner shown just up and left from the sphere's center would be situated above and behind the viewer's left shoulder.

Rainbow Sphere
Like the Rainbow Room, this creates a room where each corner is given a different color. However, these colors are applied to the walls in a way to make the room look spherical.
This spherical object is 100% reflective, which shows the exact colors of the room.
Picture File

This lets you select an image file that will be used to construct the sides of the virtual room.

This image is then typically used in conjunction with the advanced setting of 'Picture Mapping' to determine how it is applied to each of room's surfaces.
For the specific file type of Direct Draw Surface or .dds files, these may contain information for describing each of the six sides of the room. For these, the advanced setting of 'Picture Mapping' is ignored.

Advanced Settings

The following advanced settings are available:

Reflection Size

This selects how detailed and how much graphics memory is used to create the virtual room. The lower the quality setting, the more blurred the reflections can appear.

There are 2 types of settings:
- Auto - Chooses a size based on the dimensions of the chosen image and the Low, Medium or High quality.
- Width x Height - Selects the number of pixels wide and high each of the room's 6 sides contain.
Reflection Distance

This defines the size of the virtual room. The bigger the room, the further away the wall behind the viewer appears within reflections.

Picture Mapping

When using a Picture File, this defines how the image is applied to each of the room's sides.

In addition to images suitable for reflections included with the product, more are available to download in the
CyberFlair 3D Impressions Online Galleries.

Picture on 6 sides
	The picture shown to the right is copied to the 4 walls, floor and ceiling of the virtual room.
Picture on 4 walls, roof & floor approximated
	The picture shown to the right is copied to the 4 walls. The floor and ceiling are estimated from the top and bottom of the image file.
Picture on wall behind viewer
	The picture shown to the right is copied to the wall situated behind the viewer.
Wrap to 4 walls, roof & floor approximated
	The picture shown to the right is wrapped to the 4 walls. The floor and ceiling are estimated from the top and bottom of the image file.
Cylindrical Wall Wrap, roof & floor approximated
	The picture shown to the right is cylindrically wrapped to the 4 walls, which makes the room look less square. Because the left & right edges of the image used don't join, the seam can be seen in the center of the reflection. The floor and ceiling are estimated from the top and bottom of the image file.
Cylindrical Wall Wrap, roof & floor approximated (far stitch)
	The picture shown to the right is cylindrically wrapped to the 4 walls, which makes the room look less square. To better hide the fact that the left & right edges of the image used don't join, the room is turned around so that the seam would appear on the far side of the object. The floor and ceiling are estimated from the top and bottom of the image file.
Spherical Wrap
	The picture shown to the right is spherically wrapped. Because the left & right edges of the image used don't join, the seam can be seen in the center of the reflection. This mapping it particular suited to images specifically created as a spherical panoramic. Click here for downloadable examples.
Spherical Wrap (far stitch)
	The picture shown to the right is spherically wrapped. To better hide the fact that the left & right edges of the image used don't join, the room is turned around so that the seam would appear on the far side of the object. This mapping it particular suited to images specifically created as a spherical panoramic. Click here for downloadable examples.

Setting Material Reflectivity of an Object

To specify how reflective a particular material is, use the 'Reflectivity' property available on the 'Material' context ribbon category, as shown in the diagram below. This setting is also available with the Material Properties tool window.

The material's reflectivity value is expressed as a percentage of how reflective it is.

A value of zero means that the material is non-reflective.

A value of 100% means that the material is like a pure mirror, which results in none of the material's other appearance properties having an effect. So even if the object was colored red, this will not be discernible.

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