Why is my sphere reflecting clouds?

odastein

So, I'm beginning to try to see what you can do to surfaces. I create a sphere, I (after searching for a while how to do that) apply uber shader to it, and after some failed attempts to make the sphere glow, I decide instead to make it into a mirror.

And then, there's some sort of landscape that appear mirrored on the sphere (with maybe a building or mountain, and a blue sky with clouds). There's absolutely nothing in my scene, so I assume it's some sort of sample to let me see how my sphere will reflect things????  I add a wolf in front of my sphere, thinking that maybe this default reflection will go away if there's actually something to reflect, but no, it's still there. I think that maybe it will dissapear in the render, but no, the reflected landscape still appear after the rendering.

How do I make this reflected landscape go away?

barbult

This reflection is probably coming from the default HDRI in the Render Settings pane Environment section. Have you added lighting to your scene, or are you lighting it with that default HDRI? Try turning Draw Dome to OFF.

odastein

Yes, I had put two light sources in the scene. But in the Render setting pane, I see "DTHDR RuinsB background" and "DTHDR RuinsB" that look like my reflection. 

..........time spent searching for "draw dome"............

So, "Draw dome" was "off".  But reducing either "Environment intensity" from default 1 to 0 or "Environment map" from default 2 to 0 removes the reflection.

However, after experimenting, this seems to remove *all* reflection on the sphere. I added a plane with an image on it. If I let on "environment intensity" and "environment map", my image is reflected along with the default "ruins+sky". If I turn either off, neither my image nor the default "sky+ruins" is reflected.

odastein

OK, I found it. There's a default "ruins" picture in "environment map", that can be changed to "none" or replaced by another.

Thank you.