Blender’s implementation of environment maps is rather convoluted with the empties and positioning them in the negative z and all. I have a very hard time understanding the process. Furthermore, searching for “blender environment map” yielded articles that suggested that this method was obsolete due to raytracing. Anyway, I’m not entirely sure it’s the solution to my problem.
Say I have 2 planes standing up and facing the camera at different angles. I want the left plane to reflect an image of a sunrise while the right will reflect an image of a sunset in the same scene.
In that same scene, I want the background to be blank. Basically, I want the images reflected in the object to be independent of the actual world texture (or lack thereof).
I come from a 3d Max background and there, you can attach an environment map to a material so that only those objects with that material and a reflective property will reflect the attached environment map/image.
Is there a way to do this in Blender and if so, how?
What comes to mind, is a sky sphere. Create a sphere to go around your scene. Put the sphere in edit mode and select half the faces. Assign them a material ID of 1 and then select the other half of the faces on the sphere and assign them to material ID 2. Now you have two materials that you can put your image maps on and they completely surround your scene. One thing you will also have to do is flip the normals of the sky sphere inward.
Thanks for the reply but I don’t think that will work for me. To be more specific I’m trying to recreate this animation I did in 3D Max using Blender.
As you can see, the text object is reflecting an image of metal while the pulses above it are reflecting an image of rusted metal. It may not be obvious but the silver/metallic outline of both the text and pulses are also reflecting some image of a “swirl” to make it look more dynamic.
Each material (the text, pulses and metallic border) had their own environment map attached to their respective material hereby making them invisible to other reflective materials.
And all this was done without a sky box, encompassing sphere, or background/world texture/color. The background is empty.
Reposted reply. Don’t know what happened to my original reply
Thanks for the reply but I don’t think that will solve my problem. In more specific terms, I’m trying to recreate this effect which I was able to do in another program in Blender:
The text reflected an image of gray metal while the pulses above reflected an image of orange rusted metal. The silver metallic borders of both the text and pulses also reflected a procedural swirl just so it would have something to reflect when animated. So the 3 different materials are reflecting 3 different things in the same scene because each material can have their own (unique) environment map attached to them. And all this was done with an empty background (i.e. no world color/texture/material).
Is there anyway to replicate this feat in Blender? If so please post how.
Sorry for the late reply but it wasn’t only until today that I found out through searching the forum posts that this forum won’t allow any of my posts with URL to be posted until I hit 15 posts; hence, why my earlier replies never got posted. Boo on this policy even though I understand its reasoning. To the moderator(s): since I need to show an example of what I’m trying to accomplish, please excuse my attempt to circumvent this roadblock.
Anyway, I’ll reconstruct my early reply to the best of my recollection.
Thanks for the reply Atom but I don’t think this would solve what I’m trying to do. To be more specific I’m trying to recreate this animation which I did in 3d Max in Blender:
http colon slash slash xyngynkynyn dot deviantart dot com slash art slash amped-logo-reflective-129791302
As you can see from the animation, the text is reflecting an image of gray metal while the pulses above it are reflecting an image of orange rusted metal. It might not be obvious but the silver metallic border around the text and pulses is also reflecting something; specifically a procedural map of some random swirl generated by the software just so the silver metal will have something to reflect and not look plain during animation.
As you can also see, the background is empty; i.e. there is no world material/texture used. This was done because the software allows a map (i.e. procedural or image/bitmap) to serve as an environment map only to a specific material. For example, the pulses are actually just silver metal like the border surrounding it. The software allowed me to specify an environment map (in this case, an image of orange rusted metal) to “tie” it (the material) to so that the reflections reflected that environment map as if it was a world material; but, only for those with that material.
I would also like to know this. The only way I have found is to use an environment-map type texture, which only supports cubemap format and no HDR. It seems like the environment map is supposed to be baked inside of Blender, which is nice compared to other apps. But what I need is a way to load up an HDR in lightprobe, angular or latlong format and have that reflected on a specific object, not using the world texture. How can I do that?
Or is there at least an app that transforms HDRI’s to Blenders cubemap format?
Selecting “refl” under “map to” in the material buttons isn’t what you are looking for is it?
The logo-animation you linked to doesn’t really seem to reflect, it seems to be a “flat” image displayed on the material. If it is this exact effect you want, i think you could replicate it by selecting “win” in map to, and then scale the image appropriately
If none of those work, then I’m lost too I’m afraid :o
Furthermore, searching for “blender environment map” yielded articles that suggested that this method was obsolete due to raytracing. Anyway, I’m not entirely sure it’s the solution to my problem.