The Tips in detail

 "Reflections are easy."

Time will come where you are in need of reflective materials. You can do most simple reflections by adjusting the material's Shininess and the Shininess Strength parameters. By adjusting these values you will tell how dull or polished the material appears. By adjusting the Specular you will set the materials behaviour at the point where it reflects the light. The "Soften"-value will tell how sharp the border between the point (or area) of reflection is separated to the rest. This setting also influences very subtle wether the material appears to be polished or dull. Have an eye on this teamplay to keep this reasonable. So, no news so far.

You actually can't setup via these settings what the material reflects. The default is that only light from lightsources is reflected. In many cases this is not what you are looking for. Most reflections consist of light that hits the object directly and of a more or less noised and distorted image of the surroundings with some sparks of highlight and shininess.

To make your material reflect it's surroundings you will need to tell the material to do so. Depending on the rendertime you're willing to invest there are (again) several ways you might go.

The most realistic and timeconsuming way is by using a Raytraced material. Adding a Raytraced material to the reflection slot makes your material behave like a mirror. You must keep in mind that by default this material reflects everything inside the scene to infinity. Except for real mirrors this is not very reasonable. You will have to adjust the Attentuation to get this right. The given settings behave very much like those you know from the lights falloff-modifiers (see also: 009: "Using lights with fall-offs makes your scenes look more realistic.")

Again you should have a look at how real-life objects and materials do the reflections. A highly polished wooden surface for example sharply reflects things close to it's surface like a mirror but with increasing distance the reflected image gets blured and fades. Objects beyond a certain distance to the surface are not reflected atall. Except for the "Off" and the "Inverse Square" settings you may tell from where the fading starts and where it should end. Values given here are distances from the surface. Since the Raytraced Material has many parameters to play with I can only point you to your manuals since discussing all of them would go far beyond what I want to achieve with this page. Also there are some tutorials out there handling this kind of material. Go and get them.

If you are using a really reflecting material (raytrace, flat mirror pp.), be sure there is something in your scene to be reflected. If there is nothing to be reflected you might get an object in the color of your background with some highlights.

Another way is using an image inside the Reflection-slot. If you just want a generic reflection that indicates a reflected surrounding, you may use generic images that fit to your scenery and objects. If you are going to have much light use a fairly colored image. Keep in mind that the reflections actually don't change if you move something within your scenery since you don't really reflect but fake. Perhaps you might want to play with noise-maps here to be able to animate the reflections somewhat.

Yet another way is by using images, too. The difference is that you make the images used for reflections by yourself. Build up your scene and place a camera at the point where your reflective object is. Make this object invisible for now. Let the camera look into the direction you are having your Scenery-camera at and adjust its field of view. Render. Use the resulting image inside your Reflection-map slot. Perhaps you might need to make more than one of these renderings to get your object covered correctly. You might need to use ie. Adobe Photoshop to weld the images together. Going this way might be less timeconsuming than using a Raytraced material but it will need it's time, too.

Perhaps you might want to try a Reflect/Refract-material. This very much behaves like the Raytraced material but is (in most cases) by far faster to render. But beware! This material is not as realistic as the Raytraced material. For example, you can't directly setup a distance-fade nor adjust the antialiasing and such things in this material. You will have to fake via adjusting the size and the blur-values.

Which way you go is up to you and your resources. I consider the Raytraced material by far to be the most realistic way to go but it has prooven to be the most timeconsuming one, too, especially in animations.

Have an eye at the teamplay of your settings. A highly polished surface with a dull reflection in most cases is not very reasonable as a dull surface is not very likely to have sharp reflection. Adjust the "Soften"-value. Remember that infinite reflections are as rare as sharp edges. Reflective areas often have some dirt or dust that influences the reflection. If you don't need a perfect reflection, consider using the Reflect/Refract-material or predefined images, but have an eye at how and where you place them. A sparkling highlight is not very reasonable at places where no light is cast... Think about how the material basically is. A rough surface is not very likely to give a sharply reflected image of it's surroundings. A bent and twisted surface is not likely to reflect its surroundings flatly and undisturbed. Allways consider adding a noise. A moving object doesn't have static reflections. Remember how the basic material-type (phong, blinn, metal, constant pp.) modifies the texture.