Interesting talk, with reference to Mirrors and refraction what no one has pointed out so far is that a mirror is made of glass (which refracts ) with a silver layer on the back, so to model a mirror truly, you would need two objects in bryce, a glass and a metal. Having pointed that out, this often true of chrome table/chair legs which are often lacquered or plastic coated, what you need to do get very accurate is to use the shellac fake that AS posted here a while ago. (more advanced renderers support shellac style materials on one object, but bryce isn't there yet...)

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Toolset: Blender, GIMP, Indigo Render, LuxRender, TopMod, Knotplot, Ivy Gen, Plant Studio.