Background (object) reflections?

[Sengin]

Is it possible to reflect the background in water?  I ask because I have changed the background object so that it renders an image of a nebula/stars, but the water only shows as if the background was set at the default.

[Oshyan]

The Background object currently does not show up in reflections. This will definitely be fixed in the future. I am not aware of any workaround at present, except to not use the Background object for your background image - there may be other objects you could map your image to for the same results.

- Oshyan

[Sengin]

Oh, ok.  There's a "workaround" by using a default shader as the water shader's output and the default shader links to the lake object.  But there's a ton of settings in the default shader to get it looking realistic, plus you have to play with the water shader's settings a bit too.

[groverwa]

Gday

How about doing, in PS, an Edit>Transform>Flip Vertical transformation of the background and then make a mask to ensure only the water gets the reflection.

I havent tried this but will attempt it when time permits

Mike

[Sengin]

It would take a lot of postwork because of the properties of waves and reflections.  Not all of the water would be showing some of the background because of waves, and the image wouldn't be flat either (because the water would slightly warp the image with waves and such).