So I wanted to get some enviro illumination so a turned on Use Environment Reflections and dropped a hdri in the Environment Dialog->Environment Map slot.
Ok super, all fine and dandy I get the illumination I want BUT I get no Diffuse RE particles? Should these not show up on a Diffuse pass? I pretty much get black particles and an alpha. Is that correct? Is there a way to make a custom data pass with the Refl. in it? Did I miss that somewhere?
Also not that I mind much or that it is a big deal, actually it is useful but the enviro map shows up in the frame buffer, I don’t seem to remember it doing that. In your samples on the Enviro Map page none of them show the enviro. thinkboxsoftware.com/krak-en … lection-ma
Is it possible to get a switch of some sort, it is useful for layout ect. maybe not always desirable in your final pass?
Yes, you missed something, but it is easy to miss!
The Diffuse RE is there SPECIFICALLY to output the diffuse component of the Shaders with Specular component (in other words, the Phong Surface, and Marschner). It does not output anything when rendering in Isotropic mode. But you can simply switch to Phong and set both SpecularLevel and SpecularPower to 0 and you will get the equivalent of Isotropic, but with the added benefit of being able to save Diffuse RE! I guess a wishlist or bug report should be logged to output a Diffuse RE even when rendering in Isotropic mode.
Then you just need to save out an Emission RE (since the Reflection is a special case of Emission) even if >Use Emission is unchecked, and you get the two passes you need - the Diffuse and the Reflection.
We knew it would be confusing, but we decided to do it this way: In Krakatoa MX 2, if you specify an Environment Reflection Map in the Max Environment dialog, it both affects the Reflection color of the Krakatoa Material, and it shows up in the background. This was a requirement to be able to do simple compositing of Krakatoa particles over a background map which wasn’t possible in 1.6.
So if you want to get rid of the background display in the rendered image BUT you still want your environment map reflected, you check “>Override Background Color” in the Global Render Values rollout. This will set the background color to black (by default), while still using the Max map for reflections.
Voila!
Oh you know me soo well! I was and LOL almost always use isotropic, I believe many others do too Perfect thanks for clearing that up, now that I read it totally makes sense. (I will make it a point to learn and use the other modes where applicable)
Ahhhhh, I thought there had to be a reason, I also thought there had to be a way to turn it off, you guys are really good that way, I just couldn’t figure it out. I was checking the Schematic View… found nothing, I actually even looked at the GO rollout and was opening the Color History hoping it would tell me something, soo close I was
I get the illumination I want BUT I get no Diffuse RE particles? Should these not show up on a Diffuse pass? I pretty much get black particles and an alpha. Is that correct? Is there a way to make a custom data pass with the Refl. in it? Did I miss that somewhere? 
