realism
 

yo, how do you make it so when you have an object thats in a scene by itself, and make it have reflections on it likes it in a room? it seems to add a little bit more realism

use a HDRI, add it udner 'scene->backdrop->Add Environment->Image World'

or use a reflection map; open the surface editor, go to the environment tab, for reflection options select either spherical map or raytracing + spherical map, then point it to a reflection map on your harddisk

what does a reflection map look like?
where can i get one?
can i make them?

get the free part of the sunset tutorial, in there I show how to use skytracer to create a spherical environment map, which in turn can be mapped onto a sphere for a quick rendering environment or as a reflection map. This one should answer all your questions :D

thanks it really helped, one question though, how do you make it look like its in a room?

There is a HDRI Image of a kitchen under /images/hdr/ in your lightwave directory, you can use that one as a reflection map to get it look like its in a room.

i looked for that one HDRI image and i couldn't find it, is there a site that has them?

Nope, HDRI images don't show in the file dialog by default - for some reason they don't register as an image type (there is an .INI file setting you can make to rectify this, but I can't remember it off the top of my head)...

Anyhow, the easy way to find them, is to look in your Lightwave installation directory under .../images/HDRI and then change the 'Files of type' field to show 'All files (*.*)', et voila...