Bits of Blender #39 - Environment Maps

A quick tip on environment maps in Blender. Blender 2.49b.

Category:

Education

Tags:

• Blender
• Tutorial
• Nyquist
• EnvMap
• Environment Map

[blenderguy2008]

Great, Great and useful tip! 5/5!

[bitsofblender]

@blenderguy2008 Thanks! :-D

[AnsonAdams]

Isnt enviorment mapping for adding backgrounds? And is there a reason not just to make the plane reflective (Ray mirror)? Is it because the reflection takes more time to render?

Glad to see you're making more videos!

[bitsofblender]

@AnsonAdams Environment Maps are a way of faking reflections on an object. Think of it as an image map of the object's environment on the object to make it look reflective. The point of using one is to avoid ray tracing, which can be very expensive in terms of time to render.

[SEspider]

Great tip...I mean Bit. ;)

Never used Environment maps so this was a great lesson for me. Thanks Tons. ;)

Question for you.

Does the 'fake' reflection work well with curved surfaces? say the ground was curved instead.

BTW, Love that your son takes part.

[bitsofblender]

@SEspider Thanks SEspider! You can do a spherical reflection but not an arbitrarily curved surface.

[thunderk1995]

You know in blender 2.5 there is a thing where u can make the plan reflect anything above it right

[villeppi]

Why was my dad an alcoholic instead of a cool 3D guy?

[x2xHalox2x]

Same as using mirror....

Great tut

[THEAniKan]

I don't know what raytracing is.... but no this isn't related to the Bit.

I was just wondering if there was a combination of settings for a material to make it reflective. I've heard something about the Yafray renderer.....