I'm lighting this scene with a skydome with and HDRI plugged into it's color channel. The window uses an aiStandardSurface with the glass preset.
How do I turn off skydome reflections in my window I see only the ball's reflection? I tried turning down specular visibility on they sky dome, which does work for getting rid of the HDRI reflection, but then removes reflections from the ball reflection.
In max we have light groups that can be assigned to mesh.
A hack to do this is to enable a light group on the window but add no light so group is enabled, but empty, that will make the specular disapear and only render the reflection of the ball and some blue from the general environment, not the HDRI.
Could be super funny if you actually could do same trick in some way.
2nd method.
( if you want flexibility, add 2 light rigs, 1 for windows 1 for everything else, and then turn down specular contribution with a float spinner instead of a switch on the one that lights the glass ( with proper linkage to the correct light of course )) Although I do not see a point for having 50% reflection from the HDRI, it is possible via this route, the first one is an on/off experience.
You can turn the IOR of the glass to 0.
You can also create 2 skydomes. 1 with all but spec and the other with spec only. Create a plane behind the scene with Arnold visibility all to off except Cast shadow and link it only to the Spec Skydome.
AiStandard should be fine. Not sure how you are getting the shadow on your image.
This is so close to what I need! Thank you. The light linking is where it's at. I didn't need the blocker geometry.
The last bit I need to solve is that I need to have alpha around both the ball and the reflection. The mirror comes through as all RGB.
