Actually, regarding Rubermatt's comment on compositing and raytraced reflections, I've managed to do lots of neat tricks by making copied layers of the beauty passes of object renders, flipping or flopping them, messing with their size, distortion, and transluceny, and then blending them back into the inside of the alpha outline of the object they are supposed to be reflected into -- SO -- comp tricks can in fact, take care of some reflection issues as well as shadows (inverted and modified "reflections" of people standing on shiny floors or rippling ponds come to mind, both of which I've often done as a 2D trick rather than a raytrace render). It all just depends on how clever you want to get with your compositing tricks and how much time you need to save by omitting raytrace in your complex render passes. --- Thanks for the mat link, BTW -- that's a great and useful material. --