Studio doesn’t reflect anything by default. Mirrors, glossy floors, and even shiny eyes need a shader swap or a reflection probe before they’ll actually show the scene around them. Here’s how to get real reflections working, and how to fake one when a live probe is overkill.
1. Quick mirror: swap the shader
The fastest way to make a flat surface reflective is to change its shader. Select the mirror mesh, open Material Editor, pick its material, and change the shader to Mirror/Advanced (or the nearest equivalent mirror shader in the dropdown). That alone turns a flat, dead surface into something that reflects the room.
If you’d rather not hunt through shaders by hand, drop the “Mirrors by Xiongmao324” studio item into the scene instead. It reflects correctly out of the box with no material editing required.
2. Real-time reflections that match the scene
Shader swaps reflect geometry, but for reflections that actually track your scene’s lighting, you want a reflection probe.
- Add a Reflection Probe item to the scene from the studio item list.
- Open the Graphics mod (F5) and go to the Probes tab.
- Set the probe’s Importance to highest and enable reflection probe.
This gives you reflections that update with your actual scene lighting instead of a flat, static image. It costs more to render than a simple mirror shader, so use it where the reflection needs to be accurate, not on every glossy surface in the scene. See lighting with Graphics for more on how the probe settings interact with scene lighting overall.
3. Fake a floor reflection
For a glossy floor or puddle under a character, you don’t need a probe at all. Duplicate the character, then on the copy set Scale X to -1.0 and Rotate Z to 180. That flips the duplicate into a mirror image while it keeps playing the same animation in sync with the original, so the “reflection” moves exactly with the source.
Position the flipped copy so it lines up under the floor line. If your camera also needs to follow the reflection, rotate the camera’s setup Z by 180 to match. This trick works well for floor reflections, puddles, and glass surfaces without the render cost of a live reflection probe. See camera work in Studio for setting up a camera to track a duplicated object.
Mirror lighting doesn’t always match
Common reflection probe glitches
Reflection probes are also the usual suspect behind a handful of weird visual bugs on modded maps. Before you go hunting elsewhere, check the probe settings in the Graphics mod’s Probes tab (F5).
| Symptom | Fix |
|---|---|
| Rectangular “block of light” you can’t find or turn off | That’s the reflection probe’s affected area; lower its strength |
| Yellow or acid-green tint across the whole map | Probe intensity too high; set intensity to 0, or disable the probe from the map editor |
| Character renders solid black in a mirror | Enable the water layer in the SSS tab; mirrors piggyback on the water reflection layer |
| Probe only ever reflects the map and skybox, never new characters or items | Update mode is set to bake once; switch it to Every Frame |
| Colored glow on props or clothing with all scene lights off | Probe is picking up skybox lighting; set probe intensity to 0 |
| Flicker on clothing only during video export, not in live playback | Caused by screen-space reflections (SSR); disable SSR in the graphics settings |
| Scene lighting looks different after reloading a saved scene | Reflection probes; reselect and nudge them in Map Edit, or re-check Importance/Intensity |
Between a mirror shader for close-up detail and a reflection probe for scene-accurate lighting, most reflection needs in Studio are covered without any extra plugins. If lighting on a reflected character still looks off after adding a dedicated light, double check the material settings on the character itself in Material Editor before assuming it’s the probe.