Reflection Map Flat/Mirror QUESTION!!!

Hello all...Recently I have been making a targa Seq of a droid standing on a reflective surface(the floor will be added later in AE)but I have been trying to create the the reflection under the droid without the plane rendering with it.
Now I know how to do it when it comes to putting shadows(use just click the Alpha Affect Button)but with a reflection it looks like I can't get "just" the reflection. Do you guys know any way I can get a Targa sequence of just the droid and his reflection?
~Rory

 

And the program you are using is...?

-Olen

 

oh I'm sorry...3dmax
under the Map section I check: Reflection the I choose the flat mirror effect.

 

Can anyone help me?

 

Well, the trick is to use the "Matte/Shadow" material on the object (instead of a "Standard" material). It has a map slot for reflections, and that's where you'll put your "Flat Mirror"-map into.

EDIT

OK, I misread what you asked, so here's the solution:

You have to render your image (or animation) in two passes. One just with the robot, and one just with the reflection. So for the "just the robot"-pass you'll simply hide the ground-plane. For the "just the reflection"-pass you UNHIDE the ground-plane and DON'T hide the robot. Instead you right-click the robot and choose "properties". Then you'll UNCHECK "visible to camera" (and make sure that "visible to reflection" is checked). Then render this pass as well (to a black background).

In AfterEffects you'll put this reflection-layer beneath the robot layer, and set it's transfer mode to "screen" or "additive" (or try around what looks good).

The nice thing of separating layers is that you can blur (or colorize, or sharpen, or...) the reflection separately in AfterEffects.

 

Hey that sounds like that may work too...thanks alot.Well someone (I don't know if it was you and you edited what you wrote)expalined to me how to do it using the raytrace effect, but I just couldn't make it blurry so what I did was:
First I selected the plane and left it in the "standard mode" and the set the ambient and diffuse color settings to black. Then I set the glossiness and specular level to 0, and add a Flat Mirror Map to the reflection slot. Then I set the map to Reflection (as opposed to Auto Detect or Refraction) and then I put the dot in the circle with the color box. made the color black. Then, instance this map to the opacity slot.

And by Instancing this to the opacity slot it has inturn "screened" the reflection, and doing the same effect you described in AE, but did it all in 3d max in one animation Sequence.

Try it.
~Rory

 

Yeah right... didn't think about that. OK, yes, you CAN use a copy of the reflection map in your opacity slot...

Sometimes it's so easy.

(And right, you can't blur reflections when using "raytrace"... only when you'd take my 2-pass way)