EnvBall
 

Have recently been playing around with the envBall texture node, and wanna know how to get it to reflect the scene accurately. Any tutorial links or anything?:D

Re: EnvBall
 

mhh, you create a envball. connect a texture to its color (in my example a simple granite). and then you connect the envball to e.g. the reflected color on the material of the sphere. i used the same envball and connect to color of the plane. now the sphere reflects the envball, but does not need raytrace. if raytrace is enabled, then the sphere still reflects the envball everywhere where it does not see objects of the scene. but some some real reflections are put where maya needs not make use of the envball.