Environment Mapping

Environment mapping is used to render a reflection of the scene onto a surface. Examples include mirrors and other partially reflective surfaces such as floors or water.

Setting up an Environment Mapped Surface

Select a surface as Surface A, go to Env. Map tab of the Surface Effects dialog and enable environment mapping.

Note: Double sided surfaces cannot be used for environment maps

Environment Map Configuration

Reflectivity
Controls how reflective environment appears on the surface. Range includes fully reflective for a perfect mirror or blending with base texture map for a partial reflection.

Refraction
Refraction controls how light is distorted when reflecting off or through a reflective surface. Water is a common example.

Reverse Reflection
Environment map will contain scene shown through the surface. Used for refraction effects like looking through crinkled glass.

Fade to Color
Sets start/end distance at which reflection fades and limits how far away objects show in the reflection. Sky distance sets distance at which sky is rendered into environment map, allows reflection to have limited fade end distance but still show the sky.
Note: Set start/end to zero to disable fade. Set sky distance < end distance to show sky reflection.

Image Blur
Blurs reflection shown in environment map

Image LOD
Set level of detail environment map is rendered to. A higher LOD (lower resolution map) can be used for blurred/refracted environment maps (since image is distorted) to improve rendering performance.
Note: LOD 0 refers to highest resolution map.

Example environment map with a refractive, faded, partial and blurred reflection