but I mean it looks shiny when not in a

[glass frigate]

How shiny?

[manic turret]

shinyh shiny

actually

[glass frigate]

What changed just now?

[manic turret]

I disabled the reflection probe

now it's enabled

[glass frigate]

I would guess you also have realtime light sources next to this one

[manic turret]

no

there are no realtime sources anywhere

everything is baked

[glass frigate]

I am seeing a reflection from somewhere though

[manic turret]

yes, the baked light

[glass frigate]

If it were from the scene's skybox probe it should've been overridden by the reflection probe that's in use now there

Baked lights do not cause specular reflections

Except via reflection probes

[manic turret]

okay, well how do I make it look like it did before?

I want it to be shiny shiny

[glass frigate]

And only indirectly

[manic turret]

WAIT

enabling box projecting fixed it

no clue what that means or does but it works

😎

[glass frigate]

Eh
Can you show what it looks like now

[glass frigate]

The other object

[manic turret]

working on it

[glass frigate]

Box projection projects the cubemap to a box, rather than to infinity

This adds parallax to the reflection but otherwise doesn't change it at all

I would also like to see the reflection probe itself

[manic turret]

beter

the little orb or its settings?

[glass frigate]

The little orb, or the preview that shows what's reflected

[glass frigate]

It's a very low contrast environment, which results in somewhat dull reflections

[manic turret]

how do I up the contrast?

postprocessing?

[glass frigate]

The room itself is low contrast

Because of all the beige and grey

So there's simply not much to reflect

[manic turret]

can I fake a reflection?

use something darker to provide better reflections?

[glass frigate]

Sure
You can enable lightmap static meshes just for baking the probes, or use custom cubemaps for reflection probes entirely

To me that glint in the painting frames is a mystery still, because the reflection doesn't show any logical cause for it, and they persisted even when you disabled the probe

It's possible you have two or more overlapping probe bounds that are being blended

Giving unexpected results

What I like to do and what you might want as well is to make spheres or capsules to test the reflections

[manic turret]

I am causing problems

[glass frigate]

A mesh with smooth metal material, a rough metal material and a smooth non-metal material

[manic turret]

AHA

I came up with an idea™️

this room has better contrast

so I stole the cubemap from the probe in it

[glass frigate]

Then you drag these to every room with you when working and move them around
They will give you a benchmark of how standard materials should look like and actually look like in whichever space

[manic turret]

see, nowww we're cooking with gas