Reflectivity maps and Reflections not rendering

[Anonymous]

Hello, I'm trying to get the hang of 3DS Max 2021, and the main snag I'm running into is that the maps assigned to the Reflectivity maps on physical materials isn't being rendered in the viewport OR the final render. If I go into the material settings and change the Reflections parameter to 1 instead of using a map, it will render in the viewport, but it still won't render in the final render. This happens with the ART, Arnold, and Scanline renderers. How do I fix this?

(For clarification, by "not rendering", I mean it renders as if the material has no reflection maps at all and/or has a Reflections value of 0)

[oliver]

I can't replicate your problem, works with Arnold & ART:

left: material tree, center: viewport, right: final render

Do you have the Max 2021.2 update and the latest Arnold-version installed? Should work anyway but who knows...

[Anonymous]

Hm, have I misunderstood the purpose of reflectivity maps? I thought they had a similar purpose as the Reflection maps in the Legacy Standard Material.

Either way, here is what my setup looks like. The part of the material tree I have in-view is for the green hair texture with the big yellow "X", which you can see has both a reflectivity map and the Reflection parameter set to 1.0.

Some other things to note:

-I noticed Emissions textures don't appear to be rendering either.

-I rendered this with the Scanline render because ART and Arnold causes the final render to be completely black. I'm pretty sure this is because I'm illuminating the scene with a skylight, which may be incompatible with ART and Arnold, but if you think there's another reason, please let me know.

[oliver]

In the Reflection-input you plug the mask that defines where on the model it should be reflective and how much. The texture that gets reflected goes into the Environment. Same for the Emission:

In Arnold Emission is lighting the scene - in Scanline it's just brightening the color.

The Arnold-equivalent to the SkyLight is the Skydome-setting in the Arnold Light.

[Anonymous]

Wow, that actually helps a lot! Thank you!

I just have two more questions: a) What does the Refl Color Map do? b) Do you recommend any settings for the skydome that will make it imitate the effects of a skylight?

[oliver]

a) it tints the reflection 🙂
b) In Arnold (and  ART) you can directly use the Scene Environment to light the scene with a HDRI (loaded in e.g. OSL HDRI Environment-node), no need for a light. Or you set the Environment color to e.g. white for that light box-look.

But you CAN use the Arnold Light set to Skydome to do that, too. Set it to Texture and mount one (assign OSL UVW Environment-node to it) and lower the light's Exposure-setting to ~0,1.

I would recommend the Environment-method because it's easier to set up.

EDIT: link added (the Environment-link in previous post was wrong)

[Anonymous]

Would you mind explaining the Environment method in more detail? I want to try out the HDRI method, but your description of it was a little confusing.

I've tried changing the Ambient Color in 3DS Max in the past, but it appears to not work in 3DS Max 2021, or at least not with ART or Arnold.

[oliver]

Watch this to start:
https://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/3ds-max/learn-explore/caas/simplecontent/content/illuminating...