Mirror issue

[heavymetalfox]

In real life if you have a pitch dark room where you have a ball and in front of it a flashlight oriented towards a mirror, the ball will be lit by the light of the flashlight reflected by the mirror. In Maya this doesn’t work when the scene is replicated, shouldn’t the ball be lit by the reflected light regardless of global illumination?

[http://sor.typepad.com/.a/6a00d8350600cb53ef01a3fd1a8fdf970b-pi](http://sor.typepad.com/.a/6a00d8350600cb53ef01a3fd1a8fdf970b-pi)

[http://www.filefactory.com/file/66wh1d2se6m9/9_mirror_issue.7z](http://www.filefactory.com/file/66wh1d2se6m9/9_mirror_issue.7z)

[pap87]

You need caustics to do this.

[heavymetalfox]

You need caustics to do this.

why caustics? isn’t that considered as an eye ray?

[jtheninja]

why caustics? isn’t that considered as an eye ray?

Nope:

eye > diffuse surface (ball) > specular surface (mirror) > light

That’s a caustic path, complete with all the sampling difficulty that usually entails. The path the light is taking to illuminate the ball is the same one that produces effects like this: http://graphics.ucsd.edu/~henrik/images/metalring.jpg

[heavymetalfox]

Nope:

eye > diffuse surface (ball) > specular surface (mirror) > light

That’s a caustic path, complete with all the sampling difficulty that usually entails. The path the light is taking to illuminate the ball is the same one that produces effects like this: http://graphics.ucsd.edu/~henrik/images/metalring.jpg

i tried it with caustics and it works!
I still don’t know why though. The link is broken BTW, could you re-post it pls?