Reflected Lights

AI draft: generated from the Cheetah 3D 8.1.1 manual; not yet reviewed by the author.

There’s a lot more detail in this topic in the chapter on Rendering. The short version is that lights do not appear in reflections (aside from the faux reflections produced by specular materials) unless they are area lights with Visible in camera turned on. Those can appear in reflections but don’t look terribly convincing.

End of AI draft.

If you want light sources to appear in reflections and look decent, you need to build out the light sources using suitably emissive materials, reflectors, and so forth.

This is discussed in greater detail in the Rendering chapter in the section on Reflected Lights.

Specular vs. “Real”

Specular highlights are, in essence, fake reflections of light sources. If you don’t have time to build out light sources in a scene you can simply use the specular property of materials to render reasonably decent fake reflected light sources.

Again, this is discussed in greater detail in the Rendering chapter.