7] How do you make mirrors?

The trick with mirrors (or especially chrome-like objects) is not setting the attributes o f the mirror correctly, but making sure that the environment is set up so something will be reflected into the camera.

If a mirror is TOO reflective, the mirror can actually become invisible! This is because the mi rror's own flat glass/metal flat coloring is overwhelmed by all the reflecte d light. You see a PERFECT reflected image, so the object itself isn't shown. This is especially true with flat mirrors.

Some attributes that give a nice mirror polish:

                       RED  GREEN  BLUE   VALUE
        COLOR          150  150    150    *
        REFLECT        200  200    210    *     (a bit of a blue tint)
        FILTER         0    0      0      *
        SPECULAR       255  255    255    *
        DITHERING      *    *      *      255
        HARDNESS       *    *      *      255
        ROUGHNESS      *    *      *      0
        SHININESS      *    *      *      0
 
        PHONG = ON
        INDEX = 1.00
        FOG LENGTH = 0.00

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