Final Sets and Backgrounds - Animating with Blender: How to Create Short Animations from Start to Finish - page 227

Figure 13.3 Setting up a fake refl ectance texture
Figure 13.4 The Beast's eyes, with and without the fake refl ectance blend
Figure 13.5 The material settings for fake refl ection
For most items that refl ect their surroundings in a subtle way, this will more than suffi ce in an animation. The
idea was adapted from the way that fantasy painter BorisVallejo stated that he paints chrome and other highly pol-
ished metals. His theory is that our own experience with high gloss metal is mostly restricted to cars, and that is
the context in which our eye most easily recognizes it. Therefore, he paints all of his chromes with a “refl ectance
map” based on a roadway: black on the bottom for the road, then greens or tans for midground, a faded tone for
the horizon, light blue to darker for the sky, and sometimes capped at the top with a bright band for the sun.
Before you use ray mirror or even an environment map—which does six minirenders of the object's
surroundings—try the fake refl ectance blend texture. Far fewer items need to have accurate refl ections than
you might think.
Be aware that this technique does not work with perfectly fl at surfaces such as a mirror, and it only has lim-
ited success when a surface only curves around a single axis, such as a perfectly cylindrical glass. If you want